Ethical Upheaval, Creative Upheaval by Viviane Chetrit-Vatine

Ethical Upheaval, Creative Upheaval by Viviane Chetrit-Vatine

In a profound new interweaving of the ideas of Levinas and Laplanche, this book rethinks the origin of ethical capacity in human life.

It elaborates on the implications of ethics at the beginning of life in the care of infants; in psychoanalytic practice; and in the socio-political sphere. The author puts forward the hypothesis of the feminine maternal dimension as the origin of ethical capacity, and proposes the notion of “ethical seduction” to address the asymmetry between analyst and analysand. With rich clinical vignettes, the text offers an expansive metapsychology linking three elements: the organic body and the “Vital-Identital”; the erotic body and the “Sexual”; and the infinite part of our psyche arising through the “Ethical”.

Written in the long shadow of the Shoah and amid contemporary violence, this book is original and meaningful reading for all psychoanalysts.

Viviane Chetrit-Vatine is a former President of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, and a training and supervising psychoanalyst for adults and children at the Israel Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is also a faculty member at this Institute, and at Tel Aviv University. She has actively contributed to the Congrès des Psychanalystes de Langue Française (Congress of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts).