The Strange One I See Coming: Hospitality Toward the Difference in Oneself ‘Doesn't It Bother You?’

ABSTRACT When difference in oneself is rejected by oneself and others, malaise appears as a sign of openness to new possibilities. This article presents a clinical reflection on the concept of difference, but with special attention to difference in the relationship of the self with oneself. It describes the therapeutic work carried out by a clinical team from the University of Chile, using the one‐way mirror as a space for hospitality toward the difference in an adolescent migrant patient, making visible the tension between the mandate of sameness and the need to recognise otherness in himself. Closely following the work of Michel Foucault, therapy becomes an ethical and aesthetic path to concern others in pursuit of new relationships with themselves.