About
The Psychology & the Other Conference is a biennial convening space that models what it points to -- a sandbox meant to allow for the play of languages, ideas, and formulations across fields and disciplines. We aim to revitalize psychology, offering the well-springs of philosophical, theological, humanities, sciences, and other deeper traditions to dialogue.
Human life demands the fullest account of itself -- lest we fall into simplistic reductions, corrosive divisiveness, and calcified identifications. Our hope is to foster new and emergent ways of speaking to human identity, suffering, and potential -- in order to better serve the call of the suffering Other.
“Responsibility for the other, this way of answering without a prior commitment… is prior to freedom. The face of the other in proximity… is the way of the infinite.”
The "Other"
The word “Other” offers something of a triple entendre. First, “other” also points to different disciplines that psychology should continually engage with in order to invest in a capacious and dynamic depiction of the human condition. Second, the “Other” points to that which is not the self– the being outside of myself to whom I am responsible, as Emmanuel Levinas declares. Third, the Other also points to those who are “othered”-- marginalized, pushed out, and not recognized in the society and who are radically in need of our attention.
A Vibrant Community of Scholars
This community of scholars and practitioners include (but are not limited to) psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, social workers, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, clergy, and graduate students of all persuasions. All are welcome to the conversation.
