Abstract
Current psychologies of religion reflect the modernist context in which they are situated. Religion is reduced to what is researchable, generalizable, individual and “thin.” This essay suggests that a psychology of religion which takes seriously the implications of Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on ethics and the alterity of the Other would result in a different model of psychotherapy. Levinas’s view of the Other as the trace of the transcendent radically changes our understanding of the client within the therapeutic relationship. Levinas begins with ethics and so healing would be, by implication, an ethical enterprise. In a highly secularized, individualized, objectivized culture, a therapy which recognizes the sacred, which models how to view the Other as transcendent, and which does not presume to know, is a gift to the client.
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Alvin Dueck is Evelyn and Frank Freed Chair for the Integration of Psychology and Theology in the School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Alvin Dueck, School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, 180 N. Oakland, Pasadena, CA 91101. Phone: (626) 584-5537. Fax: (626) 584-9630. Electronic mail: adueck@fuller.edu.
Thomas D. Parsons is a Neuropsychologist at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. He conducts research on the design, development and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems for social neuroscience research.
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Dueck, A., Parsons, T.D. Ethics, Alterity, and Psychotherapy: A Levinasian Perspective. Pastoral Psychol 55, 271–282 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-006-0045-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-006-0045-y