Abstract
As an edited volume, Psychology and the Other is an innovative and complex collection of essays that bring together psychology, philosophy, theology, and critical cultural studies. The primary strength of this collection is its interdisciplinary nature that invites readers from a great variety of scholarly fields. Simultaneously, the volume maintains the cohesive thread of scholarly focus on identity and its multiple interpretations, as well as fluid constructions of Self and Other as the immediate constituents of any identity. The idea of the book was born out of a conference, “Psychology and the Other,” with more than 300 participants from around the globe. The objective of the project—to “explore and enrich our ways of approaching human suffering and identity with an eye to know how we ethically respond to others in this world” (p. xiii)—was clearly achieved by the book. It provides a resourceful explanation of the reasons why Otherness matters and should be further explored.
The collection of essays represents a scholarly effort to rethink some fundamental aspects of the human condition, the fluidity and contextuality of identity, and the complexity of concepts of borders. Touching upon the subjects of self-exploration, narcissism, ego, and self-definition, the volume explains and criticizes the natural human tendency toward egocentrism, and our interpretation of difference as deviance. Similarly to Ahmed’s (2000) cultural critique of strangeness being conceptualized as foreign and dangerous, especially from the point of view of coloniality and cultural hegemony, the volume invites the audience to recognize the salience of thinking Otherwise. On that note, the volume clearly resonates with Bakhtin’s (1981) groundbreaking idea that one can understand Self best through the dialogue with the Other. The interdisciplinary take-away from the volume goes back to the most fundamental emotion of love. The collection suggests that ultimately “psychological science as relational science must be founded and grounded ethically in the transformative power of love” (p. 10). The transformative nature of love is particularly relevant for the audience specializing in critical cultural and feminist rhetorical studies. It greatly resonates with bell hooks’ (2000) remarkable work on Otherness and emotion in her book with a self-explanatory title, All About Love.
Psychology and the Other is organized into three sections, each representing a particular area of specialization. The first, titled “Thinking Otherwise About the Human Condition,” addresses foundational philosophical concerns and serves to provide an introduction to the entire project of “thinking Otherwise.” This section skillfully intertwines philosophy and psychology, while addressing various clinical issues. It engages with various works of Jung, Kearny, Laing, Loewald, and Freund, among others, to explore Self and Other, problematizes Levinas’ scholarship on time and space, and integrates Marion and Kristeva to specifically focus on the human experience of being different. The second section, titled “Healing Through Relation,” aims to bridge theory and practice in the context of relational psychoanalysis. Phenomenology is addressed in a great detail in this section, together with duality of Self and Other and the suggested fluidity of identity. Sameness and difference are analyzed in the framework of psychoanalysis, and Lacan and Levinas dialogue with Freud. Schizophrenia, alterity, and the normative unconscious constitute the main research foci of this section. A unique characteristic of this section concerns the structure of its chapters: They are all followed by original commentaries from authors working in completely different disciplines. Such structure invites a cross-disciplinary scholarly dialogue on the subject of Otherness.
The third section, titled “Voices in the Field of the Other,” looks at particular case studies from a variety of fields. It provides the most insightful contextualization of case studies, rooted not only in psychology and philosophy but also in history, cultural memory, and ethics. For example, Derrida’s work on ethics of hospitality and its intersectionality with culture is particularly relevant for the current Syrian and Iraqi humanitarian/refugee crisis. The case studies also explore the notions of desire and the pornographic self, and the negotiation of identity construction in its interwoven-ness with the politics of emotion. A particularly fascinating case study titled “Confronting Otherness and Negotiating Identity in the German and Jewish Experience” problematizes the concepts of guilt and cultural memory in the study of Otherness.
Overall, Psychology and the Other critically addresses the phenomenon of conditional hospitality and questions the very nature of coexistence, inseparable from studies of other phenomena that extend beyond the relationships between the Self and the Other. This collective edition skillfully problematizes the concepts of home, strangeness, belonging, and border crossing. Furthermore, the volume offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking study of fluid identity in various scholarly contexts. This original research project successfully merges theory with empirical data, and competently bridges the personal and the scholarly. The book provides a worthwhile perspective for psychology, philosophy, and theology theorists; interpersonal, intercultural, and auto-ethnography communication scholars; as well as psychotherapy and psychoanalyses practitioners.