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Over the course of its history, psychoanalysis has adopted various metaphors to express its understanding of the mind. Originally drawn to a “depth” model that echoed the revolutionary dynamics of the early 20th century, it shifted after World War II to a more relational account that was attuned to the social problematic of how to feel “real” and secure. This relational account has turned into a mode of postmodernism that emphasises the productive nature of language and the importance of democratising the therapeutic process. Included in this is an awareness of otherness as something to be both recognised and bridged.
This article reviews these trends and argues that although the theoretical and ethical advances of this kind of postmodern psychoanalysis are real, there is also a continuing danger of reducing otherness to something colonisable. Levinas's (1985) “impossible” attitude toward the other as unknowable and primary is set up as an alternative principle through which it is suggested that what psychoanalysis might seek to preserve is that which is irreducibly other.