Table Of ContentThe value in Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation lies in its daring call to community
mental health care providers and researchers to confront the dehumanisation
of the “vulnerable help seeker” (the patient, the client), and their own moral
injury. The book offers an interdisciplinary and fascinating analysis of the
issues Catherine Racine raises through moving personal testimony about her
work as a clinician, and through an examination of “wonder” informed by
the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Racine illuminates the de-moralising,
de-humanising subtext of the institution and points to the ethical clinical
relationship that “ought to be”. This thoughtful, well-argued and compelling
book offers no simple answers. It is an intervention, a call to action, and an
example of how the work of change can be approached. This is a worthy ethical
primer and an inspiration for anyone working for structural and cultural reform
inside or outside the walls of community mental health care.
—Harold G. Koenig, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences; Associate Professor of Medicine; Director, Center for
Spirituality, Theology and Health, Duke University Medical Center,
Durham, North Carolina
At a time when health care professionals are increasingly stressed and health
care systems under-resourced, what might result if the clinical encounter were
to become a moment of wonder? Catherine Racine’s beautifully observed,
searchingly honest examination of community mental health care explores
the nature of wonder by means of Levinas’s ethical vision. It is both elegant
testimony to autoethnography’s disruptive potential in unmasking institutional
power, and eloquent advocacy for a reimagining of the relationship between
the medical professional and vulnerable help seeker in ways that could be
profoundly humanizing for each.
—Robert Song, Professor of Theological Ethics, Department of
Theology and Religion, Durham University, United Kingdom
Catherine Racine’s book is an important and timely literary contribution. Her
engagement with wonder, autoethnography, and Emmanuel Levinas adds a
unique voice to the philosophy and the theology of wonder and manifests as a
rich resource for mental health professionals, researchers, activists, students and
service users worldwide challenging the problem of clinical dehumanisation.
—Jan B. W. Pedersen, author of Balanced Wonder: Experiential
Sources of Imagination, Virtue and Human Flourishing
Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation
towards the Other
in Community Mental Health Care
Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation towards the Other in Community Mental
Health Care offers a rare and intimate portrayal of the moral process of a
mental health clinician that interrogates the intractable problem of systemic
dehumanisation in community mental health care and looks to the notion
of “wonder” and the visionary relational ethics of Emmanuel Levinas for a
possible cure.
An interdisciplinary study with transdisciplinary aspirations, this book
contributes an original and compelling voice to the emerging therapeutic
conversation attempting to re-imagine and transcend the objectifying
constraints of the dominant discourse and the reductive worldview that drives
it. Chapters bring into dialogue the fields of community mental health care,
psychology, psychology and the Other, the philosophy of wonder, Levinasian
ethics, clinical ethics, the moral research of autoethnography and the medical
humanities, to consider the defilement of the vulnerable help seeker, the moral
injury of the clinician and look for answers beyond.
This book is an ethical primer for mental health professionals, researchers,
educators, advocates and service users working to re-imagine and heal a broken
system by challenging the underpinnings of entrenched dehumanisation and
standing with those they “serve”.
Catherine A. Racine is an independent Canadian scholar, feminist, ethicist
and writer. She completed her PhD at Durham University in England in 2017.
THE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE
OTHER BOOK SERIES
The Psychology and the Other Book Series highlights creative work at the intersec-
tions between psychology and the vast array of disciplines relevant to the human psy-
che. The interdisciplinary focus of this series brings psychology into conversation with
continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and
social/critical theory. The cross-fertilization of theory and practice, encompassing such
a range of perspectives, encourages the exploration of alternative paradigms and newly
articulated vocabularies that speak to human identity, freedom, and suffering. Thus, we
are encouraged to reimagine our encounters with difference, our notions of the “other”,
and what constitutes therapeutic modalities.
The study and practices of mental health practitioners, psychoanalysts, and scholars
in the humanities will be sharpened, enhanced, and illuminated by these vibrant conver-
sations, representing pluralistic methods of inquiry, including those typically identified
as psychoanalytic, humanistic, qualitative, phenomenological, or existential.
Series Titles:
Unconscious Incarnations
Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives on the Body, 1st Ed
Edited by Brian W. Becker, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, David M. Goodman
Schelling, Freud, and the Philosophical Foundations of Psychoanalysis
Uncanny Belonging, 1st Edition
By Teresa Fenichel
Race, Rage, and Resistance
Philosophy, Psychology, and the Perils of Individualism, 1st Edition
Edited by David M. Goodman, Eric R. Severson, Heather Macdonald
Eros Crucified
Death, Desire, and the Divine in Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Religion, 1st Edition
By Matthew Clemente
Dante and the Other
A Phenomenology of Love
By Aaron B. Daniels
Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation towards the Other in Community Mental
Health Care
Levinas, Wonder and Autoethnography
By Catherine A. Racine
For a full list of titles in the series, please visit the Routledge website at: www.r outledge.
com/Psychology-and-the-Other/book-series/PSYOTH
Beyond Clinical
Dehumanisation towards the
Other in Community Mental
Health Care
Levinas, Wonder and Autoethnography
Catherine A. Racine
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 Catherine A. Racine
The right of Catherine A. Racine to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Racine, Catherine A., author.
Title: Beyond clinical dehumanisation toward the other in community
mental health care : levinas, wonder and autoethnography /
Catherine A. Racine.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge, 2021. | Series: Psychology and the other | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045878 (print) | LCCN 2020045879 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367511944 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367511937
(paperback) | ISBN 9781003052760 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychiatric ethics. | Community mental health
services—Moral and ethical aspects.
Classification: LCC RC455.2.E8 R32 2021 (print) | LCC RC455.2.E8
(ebook) | DDC 174.2/9689—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045878
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045879
ISBN: 978-0-367-51194-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-51193-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-05276-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
In memory of the lovers, my parents,
Muriel I. Hatch and F. Bruno Racine
And, in gratitude for A.W.’s shining example
Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction xiii
1 James’ Story 1
2 Three opponents of wonder 21
3 From behind the mask: Writing autoethnography 53
4 Wonder: A turn towards the divine 76
5 Levinas and the wholly/holy other 103
6 Clinical application and beyond:
The function of the holy 135
7 The politics of need and desire 170
Index 194
