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Reading Otherwise: Rethinking Ethics and Care Through Feminist Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction

Updated: Mar 10

A Feminist Impetus, Not Just a Methodological Turn

In the early 1990s, my shift from what was then called applied psychoanalysis to what I, following Shoshana Felman, call reading otherwise was never merely a change in interpretive method; it has always been driven by a deeper feminist commitment to a non-hierarchical ethic. In the work I did early in my graduate career—my 1994 master's thesis, Self and Suffering in Saul Bellow's Seize the Day: A Horneyan Interpretation—I embraced a Horneyan feminist revision of Freud—drawing on Karen Horney’s challenges to Freudian orthodoxy—to analyze literary texts. For example, Horney’s concept of “womb envy” famously inverted Freud’s sexist assumptions by suggesting that men’s envy of women’s life-bearing capacity drives them to claim superiority in other domains. Drawing on Horney’s retheorization of moral masochism—specifically, her focus on suffering as a means of dissolving the self to regain the oceanic feeling (Freud) of pre-Oedipal existence—I sought to critique the patriarchal biases of classical psychoanalysis from within, using my literary interpretations as a form of feminist intervention. From the outset, this was not merely a methodological shift but an ethical commitment: a refusal to allow analysis to reproduce the very gender hierarchies it ought to interrogate.


Yet as I engaged even revisionist psychoanalytic models in literary analysis, I became increasingly aware of a troubling dynamic. No matter how feminist my intentions, the very act of applying theory to a text risked reproducing the asymmetrical authority of analyst over patient—a hierarchy uncomfortably reminiscent of the “phallic” mastery embedded in Freud’s own narratives. Unlike the structural hierarchy of the analyst-patient dyad, this dynamic was not inherently fixed; it was a methodological posture that could be rethought and reworked. Still, it carried the risk of reinscribing the very forms of epistemic dominance I sought to challenge, demanding a more reciprocal, dialogical approach to both literature and theory.


This realization was rooted in my earlier critiques of Freud’s theories of hysteria and the origins of psychoanalysis. Freud’s founding cases often turned the female patient—the hysteric—into an object of theory, effectively transforming the Other into a subordinate, knowable term, thereby securing psychoanalysis as a master discourse. This process is particularly evident in Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), in which Freud reduces Dora to a theoretical construct, subordinating her voice to his own interpretive authority. As I argue in What Did Freud Want? Freud, Seduction, Dora, Feminisms (1994), Freud’s interpretation imposes a teleological logic that forecloses Dora’s resistance, reframing her refusal as a symptom rather than an act of agency. His demand that Dora "accept" his construction of her desire—even in the face of her adamant rejection—reveals not only a refusal to hear his patient but a foundational gesture of psychoanalysis itself: the appropriation of the hysteric’s voice to consolidate its own authority.


As I develop further in Problematizing Hysteria and the Origins of Psychoanalysis, this logic is intrinsic to Freud’s system-making. His early theoretical framework consistently transforms the Other—the unknown, the unconscious—into a fixed signifier of femininity, woman, or hysteria. What Freud encounters as gaps or absences in his theory, he fills with the construct of the hysteric, effectively reducing her subjectivity to a theoretical necessity. In doing so, psychoanalysis does not as much discover hysteria as it actively produces it as the condition of its own possibility. This process establishes the psychoanalysis/hysteria binary, a structure that, I argue, parallels the male/female opposition within psychoanalytic discourse. In positioning hysteria as the "womb" out of which psychoanalysis was born, Freud enacts a move that Derrida might call auto-bio-graphical: a self-posting that secures psychoanalysis through the disavowal of its own entanglement with hysteria.


Recognizing these dynamics led me to an uneasy realization: even a feminist-inflected psychoanalysis, if uncritically applied to literature, risks replicating the same top-down, masculinist stance it seeks to critique—positioning literature as an object to be diagnosed rather than as a site of dialogical engagement. This issue becomes even more pronounced when the critic adopting such a posture is gendered male, reinforcing the very hierarchical structures that feminist thought aims to dismantle. As I have argued in my work on Dora, Freud’s interpretive mastery functions as a mode of epistemic domination, where the analyst's theoretical certainty eclipses the lived complexity of the analysand. Similarly, the literary critic who "applies" psychoanalysis to a text without interrogating the authority of that application risks enacting a comparable gesture, transforming literature into a passive site for theoretical inscription rather than an active participant in meaning-making.


Dora’s refusal—her rejection of Freud’s interpretation, her premature termination of the analysis—offers an important counterpoint to this interpretive paradigm. Rather than reading her departure as a failure, we might understand it as a model for a different kind of engagement: one that resists foreclosure, that remains open to the otherness of the text (or the patient), that listens rather than diagnoses. My shift from what was once called "applied psychoanalysis" to what I, following Shoshana Felman, call reading otherwise, was never merely a methodological shift but an ethical commitment: a refusal to let theory reinforce the very hierarchies it ought to disrupt.


This commitment extended beyond literature, shaping my work as a clinician, where the imperative is not to impose meaning but to hold space for what remains irreducible, unspeakable, or resistant to conceptual capture. My turn toward reading otherwise emerged from this realization. It was a turn away from mastery and toward relationship—still grounded in the same feminist impulse to resist domination, but now pushing that impulse beyond the limits of an analytical framework that still positioned me as the expert authority. In short, what might look like a methodological pivot was in fact an ethical and political evolution: a continued commitment to feminist, non-hierarchical thought guiding me toward new modes of reading.


From Horney to Derrida: Theoretical Influences and Dialogues

This evolution was catalyzed by my engagement with poststructuralist and deconstructive theorists, who helped me reconceive the very act of reading in less hierarchical terms. Key among these influences is Jacques Derrida, whose work unmasked the hidden gendered hierarchies in Western thought. Derrida’s notion of phallogocentrism – the entwining of phallic (male-centered) authority with logocentric claims to truth – offered a powerful lens for understanding why traditional critical approaches so often assume a stance of mastery. If Western discourse privileges the “One” (the masculine, the rational, the authoritative) over the “Other” (the feminine, the unruly, the unknowable), it is unsurprising that orthodox psychoanalytic criticism often positions the male theorist as the knower and the text—frequently figured as feminine, enigmatic, or even “hysteric”—as that which is to be known and mastered.


In Derrida’s critique, psychoanalysis itself participates in this phallogocentric tradition – for example, by centering the father and the phallus as universal keys to meaning – and thus it risks foreclosing other meanings and voices.


Confronting this problem, I initially found guidance in Shoshana Felman, who famously argued that the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis must be reinvented as a two-way conversation rather than a one-way application. Felman’s work (especially the 1977 essay collection she edited, Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise) showed that neither discipline should dominate the other; instead of using psychoanalysis to master a literary text, one must allow the text to “speak back.” In Felman’s terms, we must learn how to “read otherwise” – to read through psychoanalysis without reducing the literary work to a mere case study. This means paying attention to what the text does not yield to our theories, to the ways it subverts or exceeds the frameworks we bring.


Felman identifies the common critical error of imposing masculinist logic on women’s writing as a “critical phallacy”—a pun that exposes the phallic fallacy of such interpretive mastery. Her question—“How can difference be thought of as non-subordinate to identity?”—resonates deeply with my project, as it calls for a mode of analysis that does not simply position “woman” or any form of alterity as the binary opposite of a male norm but instead seeks to break from the logic of polar opposition that sustains hierarchical structures.


In her seminal essay, Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy, Felman interrogates the entrenched binaries within Western discourse that subordinate the 'Other'—whether the feminine or madness—to a dominant 'One.' She poses critical questions:

“How can one speak from the place of the Other? How can the woman be thought about outside of the Masculine/Feminine framework, other than as opposed to man, without being subordinated to a primordial masculine model? How can madness, in a similar way, be conceived outside of its dichotomous opposition to sanity, without being subjugated to reason? How can difference as such be thought out as non-subordinate to identity? In other words, how can thought break away from the logic of polar opposition?” (7).

Felman’s inquiry challenges the very structures of thought that have historically marginalized both women and madness, insisting on a reconceptualization of difference that is not predicated on subordination or opposition. Her call to think otherwise aligns with my own project, which resists the temptation to merely reverse existing hierarchies or “apply” theory in ways that reinscribe mastery. Instead, it seeks to cultivate a form of engagement that does not reproduce the same epistemological violence it critiques.


Paul de Man further reinforced these lessons for me. De Man’s deconstructive literary criticism demonstrated how language invariably undermines any critic’s attempts to assert control. In his classic analysis of Rousseau or Baudelaire, for instance, de Man shows that moments of rhetorical “blindness” in the text end up blinding the critic as well, tripping up our urge to decode everything neatly. I came to appreciate de Man’s insight that every reading is shadowed by misreading, that literary texts produce meaning-effects the critic cannot fully master. This was not a setback to be lamented, but rather a sign that reading is an endeavor of constant negotiation with alterity – the alterity of language itself, which says more (or other) than what we intend. The Yale School of critics (with whom de Man, Derrida, and also Geoffrey Hartman were associated) collectively illuminated “the instability of linguistic reference in literary texts” (In memoriam: Geoffrey Hartman | Yale News). Hartman in particular, though often grouped with deconstruction, maintained a unique perspective that blended philosophic rigor with a profound respect for literary art’s emotive force.


Hartman “held to his conviction that texts have meaning and pathos beyond verbal play” (Ibid.), reminding us that deconstruction need not forsake an ethical attunement to the human resonances of literature. Through these thinkers, I encountered a model of scholarship that was both intellectually rigorous and deeply conscious of the limits of interpretation—a model grounded in embodied experience, pathos, and care. Here, knowing does not assert mastery but yields space to listening, a shift that profoundly shaped my work as a clinician and forged a crucial link between my theoretical inquiries and my ethics of care.


They taught me that the most powerful insights often emerge when we recognize the limits of our grasp, allowing the text’s voice—or even its silences (just as in the clinical encounter, the patient’s voice or silences)—to unsettle not only our certainties but also our identities. Such moments call for a response that is not merely interpretive but ethical, one that resists the impulse to reduce the Other to more of the same, as Levinas warns against. This necessitates a non-countertransferential interpretation—one that does not impose preexisting frameworks onto the Other but remains open to what exceeds or resists conceptual capture.


In both literary and clinical encounters, this means acknowledging the irreducibility of the Other’s singularity while also recognizing that, in the clinical situation, the Other is not only an enigma to be safeguarded from reduction but also a subject in need of connection and care. Thus, while Levinas warns against the violence of assimilation, we must also recognize that ethical engagement requires more than restraint—it demands the risk of care. To remain ethically responsible, we must not only respect the alterity of the Other but also respond to their need for recognition, attunement, and relational presence.


Critiquing Phallic Mastery in Literary Criticism

One of the central reasons I moved away from an “applied” psychoanalytic approach is that such approaches, even in feminist hands, can inadvertently reinscribe a stance of phallic mastery. By phallic mastery, I mean the tendency to assert interpretive dominance – analogous to the Freudian father-knows-best posture – which often carries masculinist and hierarchical overtones. Traditional psychoanalytic criticism at times positioned the critic as a kind of surrogate analyst who knows the hidden truth of the text (as if the text were the analysand needing authoritative interpretation). This stance can replicate the dynamics of a Freudian scenario in which the (usually male) analyst decodes the mysteries of a (often feminized) patient. Feminist psychoanalytic revisions tried to correct the content of Freud’s theories (for instance, replacing the idea of women’s “lack” with an appreciation of female specificity), but they did not always escape the form of the authoritative interpretation. I began to see that the very mode of applying theory to text risked becoming what Felman and others warned against – a critical phallacy, a phallic fallacy of criticism that assumes the critic’s perspective is the master-key.


Deconstructive reading offers an antidote to this by exposing and undoing structures of mastery. Rather than casting the critic as the one who penetrates the text’s meaning, deconstruction invites us to see how the text deconstructs itself, often revealing internal contradictions and “aporias” that no single authoritative interpretation can reconcile. For example, in my research I revisited Freud’s own writings (the ostensible “master texts” of psychoanalysis) and found them rife with moments of uncanny disruption where Freud’s control falters. In Uncanny (Wo)Man: The Home/Secrets of Psychoanalysis, I noted how Freud’s famous essay on the uncanny hinges on a fear of the feminine that his theory cannot assimilate – an unheimlich secret that his overt logic of castration tries to contain. Psychoanalysis, I argue, defends itself against what is totally other by reducing that otherness to the familiar binaries of male/female and presence/absence. The result is a kind of defensive loop: woman or the feminine is made into a repository for everything that eludes Freud’s sense of order, labeled as “lack” or “negativity” so that the male subject can reassert his wholeness. This is the very pattern of phallocentric mastery that feminist critique has targeted for decades – the pattern by which one term (the phallic one) secures its dominance by relegating the “other” to a deficient mirror of itself.


As I argue in What Remains: Feminisms, Psychoanalyses, Deconstructions, my commitment to reading otherwise—or other-wise—emerged from a desire to disrupt the hierarchical model of interpretation that psychoanalysis, when uncritically applied, can impose. Rather than simply using psychoanalysis as a tool to interpret a text—a process that risks imposing a preordained structure—I turned my attention to psychoanalysis itself, reading it as a text, exposing its blind spots, contradictions, and internal resistances.


Derrida was an exemplar in this regard. His deconstruction of Freud’s theory of writing, for instance, reveals how Freud’s discourse is haunted by a repression of writing that undermines his own claims to self-transparent knowledge. This is why, in Derrida’s famous formulation, deconstruction is not a psychoanalysis of philosophy—it does not simply apply the tools of psychoanalysis to diagnose philosophical texts. Instead, it is a double reading: one that uncovers a text’s deepest organizing principles—almost like an analysis seeking an origin—while simultaneously unraveling those very principles. This “double game” refuses to stabilize meaning into a final, phallic mastery, instead revealing interpretation as an ongoing process, one that resists closure.


From this perspective, interpretation is not an act of conquest but a paradoxical labor—one that remains attuned to the excesses of a text, to what resists being fully known or mastered. In my own practice, this meant relinquishing the fantasy of delivering the final word. I no longer saw my role as pinning down, say, a dream’s ultimate significance—the critical equivalent of the Freudian father pronouncing the law of the word. Instead, I approached all utterances, all dreams, all fantasies, all texts with the understanding that meaning is relational, negotiated, deferred, and co-created, not something to be extracted by force or imposed from a position of authority, as the Subject supposed to know (Lacan). This shift was not merely methodological but ethical: an insistence on listening rather than imposing, on remaining open to the patient’s or text’s refusals, silences, and provocations rather than foreclosing them in the name of interpretive mastery.


Crucially, this shift does not mean abandoning psychoanalytic insights—far from it. It means using them otherwise. I still draw on psychoanalytic concepts (castration, trauma, desire, the unconscious) but in a way that interrogates who is speaking and who is being silenced. I ask, following Felman and others, “Whose voice is not being heard under this interpretation?” For instance, when reading a novel about hysteria, an applied approach might treat the heroine’s madness as a symbol to be decoded via Freudian theory. A reading otherwise will pause to consider how the very category of “madness” has been constructed (often by patriarchal medicine) and how the text might actually be critiquing the act of diagnosing women. In other words, I now read psychoanalytically and critically at the same time: psychoanalytic ideas become objects of analysis as much as tools of it. This strategy exposes the hierarchical and gendered assumptions (the phallic order) at work in interpretation and opens up a more dialogic space where the text can “talk back” to theory. By dismantling the stance of phallic mastery, we make room for readings that are more nuanced, more honest about their own limits, and ultimately more just to the texts and histories we study.


Scholarship as Ethical Practice: From Reading Otherwise to Clinical Care

My journey from feminist psychoanalytic literary criticism toward a fully developed ethics of care has been as deeply personal as it has been intellectual. Early in my scholarly life, I was drawn to psychoanalytic theory and feminist criticism because both promised to reveal hidden narratives—of gender, power, and trauma—beneath literary texts. My initial embrace of Karen Horney's critique of Freud's androcentrism represented an ethical as well as a methodological choice: I sought not only to uncover the workings of gendered oppression in literature but also to value and amplify voices marginalized by dominant interpretive frameworks.


Yet even in these early feminist critiques, exemplified by my analysis of Saul Bellow's Seize the Day through Horney's feminist psychoanalytic lens, I became increasingly aware of an ethical tension. Despite my feminist intentions, my interpretive practices sometimes risked replicating a stance of analytic authority that mirrored the patriarchal structures I aimed to critique. This realization marked the beginning of my shift toward what I eventually called "reading otherwise," a mode of interpretation emphasizing openness to the otherness and complexity of texts rather than reducing them to illustrative examples of a theoretical framework.


The principles guiding "reading otherwise"—attentiveness to otherness, relational dialogue rather than interpretive hierarchy, and responsibility toward the complexities and silences within texts—would soon extend beyond literary studies. These principles fundamentally shaped my clinical work as a psychoanalyst treating patients with severe trauma, moral injuries, and deep psychological wounds. In the consulting room, "reading otherwise" translated into an ethic of clinical care: prioritizing listening over diagnosing, engagement over categorization, and empathy over interpretive mastery. It became clear to me that my feminist, deconstructive literary practice had profound ethical implications in clinical practice, particularly in how I approached patients whose experiences of trauma resisted conventional frameworks of psychological understanding.


Encounters with deconstructive feminist theory, particularly through Derrida’s "Freud and the Scene of Writing" and Shoshana Felman's influential reflections, initially provided a crucial vocabulary for articulating an ethics of care. However, as my clinical experiences deepened, I began to perceive the critical limitations inherent in deconstruction itself. In my essay "Let Us Not Forget the Clinic," which might equally have been titled "Let Us Not Forget Care" or "Let Us Not Forget the Reality of Suffering," I explore the intricate tensions between psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and ethical responsiveness. Drawing explicitly on Derrida's own reflections in "Let Us Not Forget—Psychoanalysis," I argue that while deconstruction offers profound insights into the complexities of language, meaning, and ethical responsibility, it risks abstracting and distancing itself from the embodied, lived experiences of suffering and trauma encountered daily in clinical practice.


As articulated further in my blog post, "Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Ethics: Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and the Call to Care," this critique underscores the necessity of a more grounded, relational ethic—one that respects the textual insights of deconstruction without allowing them to eclipse the urgency and reality of human pain. This recognition demanded a shift toward ethical responsiveness characterized by humility, vulnerability, and a willingness to be genuinely unsettled by the other’s experiences. Rather than seeking theoretical mastery or interpretive certainty, my clinical approach emphasized ethical attunement, relational openness, and compassionate engagement with the often-unspoken complexities and contradictions presented by my patients.


Thus, my early feminist and literary commitment to "reading otherwise" organically evolved into a fully embodied clinical ethic of care. In practice, this ethic necessitated a deeply attentive responsiveness to the intricate realities of patients' lived experiences, actively engaging with narratives profoundly shaped by trauma, moral injury, and inherent ambiguity. It involved resisting the temptation toward reductive interpretations, instead embracing complexity, acknowledging silence, and honoring the disruptive potential inherent in each patient's story. Consequently, my clinical practice became explicitly relational, driven by empathy, ethical responsibility, and an unwavering commitment to bearing witness to the full complexity of human suffering.


Today, the principle of "reading otherwise" defines my ethical stance in both classroom and clinical settings. It continually reminds me why I initially entered literary and psychoanalytic work—not to assert interpretive authority or theoretical dominance, but to foster genuine human connection, empathetic understanding, and ethical responsiveness. This practice remains deeply influenced by feminist thought, yet critically expands upon it, emphasizing that care, empathy, and ethical responsibility must remain deeply anchored in the tangible, embodied reality of human experience rather than purely abstract conceptualizations.


Ultimately, advocating an ethics of care through reading otherwise in literary and clinical contexts foregrounds compassionate responsiveness rather than interpretive mastery. It highlights an ethical commitment to recognizing, respecting, and engaging deeply with the lived complexity and humanity of others, ensuring that our interpretive and clinical practices remain rigorously accountable to the individuals whose suffering and narratives demand our careful attention and care.


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