Must Out of Sight Mean Out of Mind? Levinas, Language, and the Schizophrenic Other

Levinas reminds therapists that the loss of words suffered by schizophrenic patients is not mere silence. It is also isolation. If a patient lives in a world for which there are no words, then it is difficult to relate across distance that separates human beings. Sometimes the best a schizophrenic patient can do is present amorphous fragments to a therapist. Instead of concentrating solely on the forms of the words themselves, a therapist should also explore expressed meaning. All words reveal and conceal this meaning, but some words conceal more than others, especially if they are very general. Even now, mainstream psychology holds Karl Jaspers’s view that diagnoses and terms are a necessary template; that we must label schizophrenia and its symptoms in terms of form rather than content because such individual characteristics of the content mean there is no truth in such experiences for a therapist to understand (1913/1997). I contend that Levinas offers an ethical alternative to this rather dehumanizing point of view by reminding therapists that only the Other human being knows the truth of his own individual experience, and this holds true for schizophrenics just as much as for therapists.
Source: Journal of Humanistic Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Articles Source Type: research