The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice

Utilizing the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the ethics of Emmanuel Lévinas, The Suffering Stranger invigorates the conversation between psychoanalysis and philosophy, demonstrating how each is informed by the other and how both are strengthened in unison. Orange turns her critical (and clinical) eye toward five major psychoanalytic thinkers – Sándor Ferenczi, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, D. W. Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, and Bernard Brandchaft – investigating the hermeneutic approach of each and engaging these innovative thinkers precisely as interpreters, as those who have seen the face and heard the voice of the other in an ethical manner. In doing so, she provides the practicing clinician with insight into the methodology of interpretation that underpins the day-to-day activity of analysis, and broadens the scope of possibility for philosophical extensions of psychoanalytic theory.

Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D., is a faculty member at the Institute for Specialization in the Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self (Rome) and at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York. She lives in New York City.

What is Hermeneutics? The Suffering Stranger and the Hermeneutics of Trust. Sándor Ferenczi: The Analyst of Last Resort and the Hermeneutics of Trauma. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann: Incommunicable Loneliness. D. W. Winnicott: Humanitarian without Sentimentality. Heinz Kohut: Glimpsing the Hidden Suffering. Bernard Brandchaft: Liberating the Incarcerated Spirit. Afterword: The Next Step.