Thinking psychology otherwise

a conversation with Mark Freeman

Mark Freeman

pp. 147-176

in: Heather Macdonald, David Goodman, Brian Becker (eds), Dialogues at the edge of American psychological discourse, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

In his dialogue, Mark Freeman carries forward the ideas of Levinas by suggesting a whole host of ways in which the Other can offer unique forms of transcendence wherein our egocentric preoccupations are "arrested" and the "perimeters of the self" are not the limits of experiential and ethical possibilities. Music, nature, and the human face all have the capacity to pull one out of what he calls "ordinary oblivion," beyond oneself and more fully into the world and the experience it gives. Freeman describes this as a type of "thinking otherwise" where experience originates from outside of the prioritization of the self, not merely functioning as a "product of the psyche."

Cited authors

Levinas Emmanuel

Freeman Mark