The Other in Clinical Practice

ABSTRACT

How does “the other” emerge in our clinical practice? “The other” is something which is neither experienced nor perceived by you as yourself, in contrast to “I,” the center of a sense of continuity and cohesion of experiences. Psychoanalysis has tried to capture “the other” in many forms; it may be referred to as unconscious, an internal object, or another person. In this article, I examine “the other” from the perspectives of intersubjective system theories and the Ethical Turn in psychoanalysis, and illustrate that this theme is linked to discrimination, persecution, prejudice and defamation. We, as therapists, cannot escape judging and discriminating a patient because we are trained to distinguish the world with names. We create a difference between “I” and “the other,” which cannot be distinguished. I suggest that we be ready to put ourselves into the moment without context, in which the patient can be us and we can be the patient. We are always both “I” and “the other,” a player-witness.

KEYWORDS:

• Taoism
• psychoanalytic zero
• names
• trauma
• western philosophy
• the moment without context
• player-witness
• contingency

Acknowledgments

The original version of this paper appeared as a chapter in the author’s book, “Tojisha toshiteno Chiryosha [A Therapist as a Player-Witness]” (2021, Tokyo: Iwasaki Gakujyutsu Shuppan) in Japanese.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Koichi Togashi

Koichi Togashi, Ph.D., L.P., is a Faculty and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology, New York; a Professor at Konan University, Kobe, Japan; and is in private practice in Hiroshima and Kobe, Japan. He is a Council Member of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. He is also an editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and an International Editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. He has published numerous books and articles in the US, Japan, and Taiwan. His latest book, The Psychoanalytic Zero: Decolonizing Study of Therapeutic Dialogues, won the 2020 Gradiva Award for Best Book.