The words seduction and ethics, which at first sight seem mutually exclusive, are at the heart of the analytic perspective. Vivian Chetrit-Vatine takes as her starting-point an encounter, which is not necessarily consensual, between Emmanuel Levinas's thought and his conception of philosophy as ethics - ethics understood as responsibility for the other - and that of the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, who posits the first adult other as a seducer of the young psyche from the outset, due to the transmission of enigmatic messages compromised by his or her unconscious. The analyst's ethical position is re-examined and with it the feminine/maternal origins of the human capacity for responsibility for the other.
"[...] it is Chetrit-Vatine's weaving of the infinite with attempts to totalize that make for the rhythm that moves the book along, not to a conclusion, but to a feeling of a bubbling cauldron of thought." - Maureen Kurpinsky, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing, 2019
"I found Chetrit-Vatine’s book intellectually stimulating, eloquent, clinically accessible, and highly relevant given our profession’s struggle to come to terms with violations of patients by some of our colleagues." - Rita Teusch, Hanns Sachs Library and Archives Newsletter, Fall 2017
Howard B. Levine, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, June 2017
Catherine Chabert, Revue Francaise de Psychanalyse 77, 2013 (French)
Theresa Spadotto, Association pour les Publications et la Recherche Psychanalytiques, October 2010