Difference and Demand: Toward a Levinasian Psychopatholog

Lenzo, Edward Anthony

English

This dissertation is an attempt to approach psychopathology from a broadly Levinasian perspective. I do so by situating concerns and insights raised by Emmanuel Levinas relative to phenomenological and 4e (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) approaches to psychology, cognitive science, and psychopathology. There has been some recent take-up of Levinas by these approaches, but it has remained somewhat superficial or otherwise inaccurate. It is my position that Levinas concepts of expression as a fundamentally social, ethical, and asymmetric relation, embodiment as sensitive exposure to and enjoyment of the world, and subjectivity as the substitution of ones own existence for the other, can deepen our understanding of intersubjectivity, ethical experience, and pathology phenomena.  In Chapter 1, I demonstrate that phenomenology relies on similarity in its articulation of interpersonal understanding, and that this becomes problematic in the context of psychopathology, where difference becomes thematic. In Chapter 2, I articulate Levinas conception of expression, which presupposes difference rather than similarity and accomplishes an interpersonal relation that is fundamentally ethical. In Chapter 3, I show how such a conception can contribute to understanding by considering the ways that expression can direct ones attention to that which was not previously known. I do so by considering the theory of natural pedagogy and dynamical systems approaches in psychopathology. In Chapter 4, I present some underlying assumptions of 4e approaches to psychopathology, specifically focusing on enactivism, and consider enactivist accounts of ethics and ethical experience. It is my contention that these accounts fail to make sense of the possibility of overcoming self-interest, and accordingly of various forms of ethical experience. However, bolstering these accounts with a Levinasian concept of expression produces a powerful understanding of the production of understanding across difference. In Chapter 5, I apply Levinasian insights to interpreting specific pathology phenomena associated with depression, narcissism, and schizophrenia. Finally, I address the applicability of concerns raised in Chapter 1 to my own account

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Difference and Demand: Toward a Levinasian Psychopathology

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Difference and Demand: Toward a Levinasian Psychopathology

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