Alterity, Initiation, and the Call to Suffer: Response to Commentaries by Celenza and Itzkowitz

Abstract

The discussions by Celenza and Itzkowitz underline the therapeutic principle that the splintered internal worlds of dissociative patients can be accessed in multiple ways. In my response to their commentaries, I will discuss how the use of theory can become a simulacrum of the colonial mind-set. I also echo Celenza’s idea (this issue) that the enactment of maternal eroticism is crucial in clinical work with psychopathy and perversion. I add that there is no degree of preparation or style of participation that protects the therapist from encounters with his own alterity.

Keywords:

• dissociation
• enactment
• eroticization
• self-disclosure
• perversion

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ I use the word alterity to describe an aspect of the therapist’s subjectivity that contains unformulated and unformulatable content.

² Chetrit-Vatine (2014), in her explication of ethical seduction, describes a therapist who induces the patient into analysis through a matricial stance, which can be seen as a kind of anticipatory hospitality (Orange, 2012)—an invitation before the invitation. Her idea of this seductive, matricial space does not regard the erotic, destabilizing force that is also inside the therapist/mother (see Celenza in this issue). Hence, one gets the sense that Chetrir-Vatine’s (2014) matricial therapist is devoid of enigmatic alterity; one who only induces, but does not rupture.

³ Laplanche (2011) referred to the unconscious as the Sexual.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelley Heusser

Shelley Heusser, MAClinPsych, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also a supervising psychotherapist, and co-founder of the Johannesburg Relational Therapeutic Alliance study group.