The demanded self: Ethics and identity in modern psychologies

In the West, the self is fundamentally problematic. It has been defined within the epistemology of a secular science that has divorced ethics and identity. This has led to a version of the self that is without ethical regard for the Other. This author argues that psychology maintains and propagates this self. It is suggested that psychology is in need of a prophetic and subversive discourse to provide a corrective to dominant configurations of the self that merely represent the normative order. The work of Emmanuel Levinas is introduced as a post-secular model for such a discourse; a challenge to the morally anemic and narrowly defined self of modernity. In order to argue for an ethically constituted self, Levinas' thought is used to construct a version of the self that is fundamentally defined in ethical relationship to the Other. It is defined as "hineni" ("here I am"). Working from an alternate paradigm of selfhood, the aims of psychotherapy become more about ethical responsibility to the Other and less about ego integration, rationality, and normality. This alters the self out of which we live and calls it beyond itself.