Maternal Ethics and the Therapeutic Work of Protecting Open Futures

ABSTRACT

This article concerns the relevance of maternal ethics to psychoanalytically inspired practice, particularly the work of protecting open futures. The signifier maternal is used here not as a designation of motherhood, biological or otherwise, but as a descriptor of a kind of dedicated caretaking experienced in a variety of dialogical relationships including that of patient and therapist/analyst. Both the maternal and ethical turns in psychoanalysis and the postmodern shifts in the definition of ethics contribute to a relational ethics that takes into account past, present, and future, and an appreciation of radical perspectives on otherness.

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Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Corpt

Elizabeth Corpt, MSW, is the Past President and Supervising Analyst at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry.