About

The Conference

The Psychology & the Other Conference is a yearly convening that aims to revitalize psychology by bringing it into dialogue with philosophy, theology, and other humanities rich traditions. Since its inception in 2011, the Conference has served to gather under a single intellectual roof perspectives that had heretofore been largely isolated from one another. Attended by clinicians, academic psychologists, philosophers, theologians, historians, poets, anthropologists, and cultural theorists, this community attempts 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.One of the distinctive features of the conference is the intentional pairing of plenary speakers with persons from different disciplines to create a type of catalytic engagement that upsets the insularity and jargon-laden fixtures that often come to determine the currency of exchange at discipline-specific conferences.

“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.”

Levinas, 1981, p.116

The Other

Driven by a shared passion to challenge some of the insularity of our concepts and creatively invite the possibility of more ethically dynamic means of understanding persons and health, participants in this Conference have found in the idea of the Other an important vehicle for bringing into meaningful dialogue disciplines and fields of inquiry within psychology that share something of a common purpose. The word Other carries with it several meanings and this Conference attempts to serve each, inviting psychology to benefit from other disciplinary understandings, recognizing the ethical responsibility we each bear for one another, and attending to those who have been othered by the world: the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, those living on the margins of society.

The Community

This vibrant 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.

Core Team

We are a group of interdisciplinary scholars, researchers, and practitioners who are dedicated to revitalizing philosophical, theological, and psychosocial traditions in psychology in order to augment our moral vocabulary for understanding clinical work within the context of a higher ethical calling.

Conference Chairs

David Goodman

David Goodman is Dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies, the Executive Director of the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics, and serves on the faculty in three Boston College departments: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Philosophy, and Formative Education. Dr. Goodman has written over a dozen articles on continental philosophy, Jewish thought, social justice, and psychotherapy. Dr. Goodman currently serves as the Series Editor for the Psychology and the Other Book Series with Routledge. He has authored and edited over a dozen books including The Demanded Self: Levinasian Ethics and Identity in Psychology (with Duquesne University Press, 2012) and Psychology and the Other (with Mark Freeman and Oxford University Press, 2015). Dr. Goodman is also a licensed clinical psychologist and has a private practice in Boston, MA.

Michael Mookie Manalili

M. Mookie C. Manalili is a psychotherapist, professor, and researcher with particular interest in suffering, embodiment, meaning-making, narratives, memory, and ethics. He is a psychotherapist in a private group practice, utilizing narrative therapy, psychoanalytic approaches, mindfulness traditions, and body-based techniques. He is also Part-Time Faculty at Boston College's School of Social Work and Research Consultant for the Morality Lab and the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics.