Efrat, D: Response-ability and Response-inability in the The

The study presented here relates to Emanuel Levinas‘ notion of responsibility, and Wilfred Bion‘s conception of human psychic development. In the context of this book, responsibility loses the moral connotations attached to its use in everyday language and is looked at as dynamically potent through an emphatic shift from the moral to the dialogical characteristics held in this notion. "Response-ability" and ‘response-inability‘ are understood as extensions of very early experiences in the realm of relatedness. Furthermore, they are seen as basic emotions in which child and parent are mobilized in verbal and nonverbal communicative interactions. The interrelations between appealing-responding-differentiating, constitute a particular emotional dynamic composed of three elements - (Q) for questioning/appealing, (R) for responding, (Df) for differentiating. Transferential and countertransferential dynamics are illustrated in a discussion of the myth of Oedipus taken as a clinical case.