Honoring the Sensate Bond Between Disparate Subjectivities in Psychotherapy

Ideas of empathy and genuineness are accepted by practitioners of psychotherapy as a basis for whatever else we do. In taking these ideas almost for granted, there can be a risk of overlooking key phenomenological dimensions of the subjective process to which they correspond. Levinas' exposition of the multilayered dimensions of proximity between disparate subjectivities safeguards us against substituting understanding for the kind of embodiment he calls "for-the-other" (Levinas, 1974/1998, p. 79). In working through his description, we attempt to reveal the subjective tendencies already operating within us implicitly-tendencies that expose us to the other to the point of the impossibility of turning away. In more fully inhabiting this powerful dimension of our subjectivity, we enter into a proximity with our patients that has the power to nourish the psychological hunger that fuels their emotional pain. In the final pages of this article, we offer some thoughts, including a clinical example, of the tangible clinical value that opens up when we inhabit the proximity we already have with our patients.