To Surrender or To Submit: Making Distinctions in Terms of Levinas’ One-for-the Other—A Reply to Gregory S. Rizzolo

Abstract

An interdisciplinary dialogue between Levinasian philosophy and Kohutian self-psychology, while viable, benefits from clarification regarding shared terms (like “subjectivity,” “self,” and “other”) and distinctions between theoretical and practical constructs. This article considers how these types of distinctions might be made so that Levinas’ ideas can more productively inform a psychoanalytic context. Ghent’s article “Masochism, submission, surrender” (1990) suggests distinctions between the affective experiences of submission and surrender that help to develop a more experienced near reading of Levinas. Reading Levinas through or along side Ghent also helps the analyst recognize why submission might shade into moral masochism and how the analyst can discriminate between the two experiences in way that is informed by Levinas’ ethical stance.