Talk:France

From No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis
Jump to: navigation, search

---


Freud spent several months, from October 1885 to February 1886, studying in Paris with Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital. This experience greatly determined his orientation toward psycho-pathology. In his article "Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses," published in French in 1896 in the Revue neurologique, the word psychoanalysis appeared for the first time.

In France, Jean Martin Charcot's legacy gave rise to bitter disputes on the nature of the mind, and Pierre Janet's theories were widely accepted in medical and philosophical circles. These two factors explain the poor reception given to Freud's ideas for many years. The article that Freud called "the first article on psychoanalysis written in France," by Doctor René Morichau-Beauchant, professor of medicine in Poi-tiers, appeared as late as November 14, 1911, in La gazette des hôpitaux civils et militaires. In 1913 a French translation of Freud's essay "The claims of psychoanalysis to scientific interest" in the Italian journal Scientia went unnoticed.

In 1914 Professor Emmanuel Régis and his assistant Angelo Hesnard, a naval doctor in Bordeaux, wrote the first book on psychoanalysis, La psychanalyse des névroses et des psychoses, but the First World War cut short further interest in the field. It was not until December 1920 that the Revue de Genève andÉditions Payot published a French translation of Freud's essay "On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement" (1914).

With Freud's support, Eugénie Sokolnicka, a Polish psychiatrist who had settled in France, began analyzing young psychiatrists working at the Clinique des maladies mentales at the Sainte-Anne Hospital under the direction of Professor Henri Claude. Psychoanalysis became fashionable in France around 1921: In October 1921 André Breton traveled to Vienna to meet Freud, the "greatest psychologist of our time." Henri-René Lenormand's play "Le mangeur de rêves" (1921) turned out to be a success. And the Belgian journal Le disque vert published a special issue in 1924 titled "Freud et la psychanalyse" (Freud and psychoanalysis).

Though the medical profession remained overtly hostile to psychoanalysis, a number of young psychiatrists interested in psychoanalysis, including René Allendy, Angélo Hesnard, René Laforgue, and Eugène Minkowski, decided to launch a journal that was clearly psychoanalytic in orientation. The first volume ofÉvolution psychiatrique appeared in 1925, followed by a second in 1927. In 1930 the journal founders formed a learned society of the same name, which was still in existence in 2005. In July 1926 these psychiatrists, along with Raymond and Ariane de Saussure, Édouard Pichon, and Adrien Borel, organized the Conférence des psychanalystes de langue française (Conference of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts) in Lausanne, the origin of the Congrès des psychanalystes de langues romanes (Congress of Romance Language Psychoanalysts) and the Congrès des psychanalystes de langue française (Congress of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts), which take place annually.

On November 4, 1926, the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP; Paris Psychoanalytic Society) was formed under the guidance and with the assistance of Princess Marie Bonaparte, Napoleon's great-grand-niece, who was being analyzed by Freud and who later become close friends with him. Her circle included Eugénie Sokolnicka, Angélo Hesnard, René Allendy, Adrien Borel, René Laforgue, Georges Parcheminey,Édouard Pichon, and Rudolf Loewenstein. (The last was a Polish Jewishémigré who, after training at the Berlin Institute, settled in France, where he became the first and best known teaching analyst. He was naturalized in 1930.) Also in her circle were a number of French-speaking Swiss analysts. They included Charles Odier, Henri Flournoy, and Raymond de Saussure (the son of the linguist), all of whom made important contributions to the growth of the new society. The first issue of the Revue française de psychanalyse appeared on June 25, 1927, and on January 10, 1934, the Institut de psychanalyse was created and remained active until 1940.

The development of psychoanalysis encountered some difficulties, however, notably with the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and because of Freud himself. The French welcomed Freud's "psychoanalytic method" but in general rejected Freudian "doctrine," to paraphrase the title of a critical essay by Roland Dalbiez published in 1936. Because of this tendency, Marie Bonaparte played a crucial role. She was not a physician, and by being jealously faithful to Freud, she prevented psychoanalysis in France from falling completely under the sway of institutional psychiatry (Mijolla, 1988b). She also began translating Freud's writings intermittently until 1988, when a team led by Jean Laplanche began a new translation of Freud's complete works (Mijolla, 1991).

During the 1936 international IPA congress in Marienbad, Czech Republic, the young Jacques Lacan presented a paper titled "Le stade du miroir" (The mirror stage, or phase). He became a member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris in December 1938, nine years after Sacha Nacht (October 1929) and eighteen months after Daniel Lagache (July 1937), his future rivals, both of whom, like Lacan, were analyzed by Rudolf Loewenstein. Though there were few truly innovative French presentations aside from Lacan's paper, many presentations helped spread Freudian theory and technique, which was for the most part based on the work of Sándor Ferenczi. The recommendations made by René Laforgue (on scotoma, schizonoia, and family neurosis) went unanswered, as did the many articles and essays by Angélo Hesnard, Édouard Pichon, and René Allendy.

Freud received assistance in emigrating from Austria from U.S. Ambassador William C. Bullitt and Marie Bonaparte, who paid the "departure tax" demanded by the Nazis and saved his antiquities collection. Following his departure from Vienna, Freud stayed in Paris on June 5, 1938, while waiting to embark for London. Because of Nazi persecutions, Jewish psychoanalysts had begun to leave Germany in 1933, usually passing through Switzerland or France. They included René Spitz and Heinz Hartmann. They too received help from Marie Bonaparte, as well as from Anne Berman (Bonaparte's secretary), René Laforgue, and Paul Schiff.

On June 13, 1940, the day before Hitler's troops entered Paris, Sophie Morgenstern, one of the first child analysts, committed suicide. The Société psychanalytique de Paris and the Institut de psychanalyse closed their doors, and the Revue française de psychanalyse ceased publication. There was no overtly psychoanalytic activity in France during the four years of German occupation. Rudolf Loewenstein succeeded in leaving for America, where he settled for good. Marie Bonaparte went into exile in Cape Town, South Africa. Sacha Nacht, who worked with the Free French forces, barely escaped deportation. Daniel Lagache continued teaching in Clermont-Ferrand, where the University of Strasbourg had temporarily reestablished itself. Paul Schiff joined the troops that would later liberate Italy and France, while Jacques Lacan, Françoise Dolto, Marc Schlumberger, and John Leuba continued their activities in Paris. Only René Laforgue attempted, from 1940 to 1942, to create a French section at the Göring Institute, but his efforts were in vain. His subservient attitude toward the occupation authorities resulted in his exclusion from the Société psychanalytique de Paris following liberation (Mijolla, 1988a).

After 1945 psychoanalytic activity resumed in France. A number of new figures appeared on the scene: Maurice Bouvet, Serge Lebovici, René Held, Maurice Bénassy, Francis Pasche. On July 25, 1946, the annual Congrès des psychanalystes de langue française (Congress of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts) resumed in Montreux, Switzerland. In November, Maryse Choissy founded the Centre d'étude des sciences de l'homme (Social Sciences Study Center) and launched the journal Psyché, both of which were influenced by the Catholicism of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. That same year the Centre psychopédagogique Claude-Bernard (Claude Bernard Psychopedagogical Center) was created, with Georges Mauco as nonmedical director. Juliette Boutonier was the medical director, but she turned the position over to André Berge in order to replace Daniel Lagache at the University of Strasbourg. Lagache had been appointed to a position at the Sorbonne, where he created a degree program in psychology. In 1948 a new publisher, Presses universitaires de France, began publishing the Revue française de psychanalyse.

The Cold War began, and the Communist journal La nouvelle critique published an article in 1949 referring to psychoanalysis as a "reactionary ideology." The article, written by four psychoanalysts, one of whom was Serge Lebovici, reinforced the criticisms made by Georges Politzer before the war. Years later, between 1973 and 1977, Lebovici was the first French psychoanalyst to be made president of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

The success of psychoanalysis continued to attract candidates and presented the problem of training them. Moreover, a suit brought against Margaret Clark-Williams between 1950 and 1952, a psychoanalyst but not a medical doctor, for illegally practicing medicine, though concluded in her favor, exposed the collective responsibility of the psychoanalytic community and the need to establish criteria for practice.

After three years of violent debate, flip-flopping alliances, and maneuvering between the three French leaders who acquired their positions after the war, the decision to create a new Institut de psychanalyse caused a split in the Société psychanalytique de Paris. None of the three were especially interested in making the institutions democratic, and they waged a kind of open warfare with one another that would leave scars on the psychoanalytic community in France for years to come. Aside from their personal ambitions, they had opposing ideas about the theory, practice, and institutional organization of psychoanalysis. Sacha Nacht wanted to remain faithful to the norms of the International Psychoanalytical Association and aligned with medical education. Daniel Lagache favored academic training. The third, Jacques Lacan, developed original theories and methods of therapy, and the latter, especially his "variable-length sessions," did not comply with international standards.

On June 16, 1953, a motion of no confidence was passed against Jacques Lacan, then president of the Société psychanalytique de Paris. Daniel Lagache, Juliette Favez-Boutonier, and Françoise Dolto then announced that they would be leaving the society to form the Société française de psychanalyse (SFP; French Society for Psychoanalysis). Lacan joined them and was followed by nearly half the students, who were behind the split. But the defectors, in their desire to create an institute free of Sacha Nacht's authority, had overlooked the fact that they would be excluded from the International Psychoanalytical Association and would have to undergo a lengthy period of scrutiny by the international community before they could prove their ability to train new analysts (Mijolla, 1996).

In September 1953, the sixteenth Conférence des psychanalystes de langues romanes took place and, at the end of the SPP meeting, Lacan presented to the members of his new society, the Société française de psychanalyse, his "Discours de Rome" on the function of language in psychoanalysis.

The Institut de psychanalyse de Paris (Paris Institute for Psychoanalysis) was officially established on June 1, 1954. Sacha Nacht remained the director until 1962, when Serge Lebovici replaced him. Through the Centre de diagnostic et de traitements psychanalytiques (Center for Diagnostics and Psychoanalytic Treatment), run by Michel Cénac and René Diatkine, Nacht was to become, for nearly thirty years, the symbol of traditional psychoanalysis in France, to the detriment of the Société scientifique, which did not return to its former prestige until 1986. To strengthen its image, the Twentieth International Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association was held in Paris in 1957. The IPA had met there once before, in 1938, and would meet in Paris again in 1973.

Around this time new directions in psychoanalysis were explored. For example, in Paris in 1958 Philippe Paumelle, Serge Lebovici, and René Diatkine created the Association de santé mentale (Mental Health Association), which provided doctors and social workers with training in psychoanalysis. Also established that year were the Groupe Lyonnais, the first regional branch of the Société psychanalytique de Paris, and the Séminaire de perfectionnement, an annual meeting for psychoanalysts working throughout France, similar to the Journées provinciales run by the Société fran-çaise de psychanalyse.

The rivalry that developed between the two societies promoted the growth of theoretical developments as well as new institutional forms. The work of Maurice Bouvet is a case in point. Through his writing, Bouvet attempted to counteract the growing interest in the ideas of Jacques Lacan. Unfortunately, he died at the early age of forty-nine in 1960. In 1962 an annual prize in psychoanalysis was created in his name.

There were a number of psychoanalysts for children working in France at this time. In the Société psychanalytique de Paris there were Serge Lebovici, René Diatkine, Roger Misès, Michel Soulé, Pierre Mâle, Jean Favreau, Ilse Barande, and Pierre Bourdier. In the Société française de psychanalyse there were Jenny Aubry, Françoise Dolto, Maud Mannoni, and Victor Smirnoff. In the field of psychosomatics were Jean-Paul Valabrega (SFP) and the team formed around Pierre Marty: Michel Fain, Michel de M'Uzan, and Christian David (all SPP members). David went on to found the Institut de psychosomatique (Institute of Psychosomatics). Those working in psychodrama and group psychoanalysis included Jean and Evelyne Kestemberg, Jean Gillibert, and Robert Barande (SPP), and Didier Anzieu, Angélo Bejarano, René Kaës, André Missenard, and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (SFP). Primary representatives in the field of psychogenesis and the treatment of psychosis were Sacha Nacht and Paul-Claude Racamier of the SPP, and Jean-Louis Lang, Serge Leclaire, François Perrier, and Guy Rosolato of the SFP. Worthy of note is that there was a certain coolness in France toward Melanie Klein's theories, which remained relatively unknown until the 1970s, following the work of James Gammil, Jean Begoin, and Florence Begoin-Guignard.

Jacques Lacan became increasingly important in French psychoanalysis and as a leader of young analysts. He published articles in La psychanalyse, the SFP review created in 1955 (the eighth and last number appeared in 1964), and in 1953 began giving his famous seminars. The increasingly well-attended sessions were held every Wednesday from 12 noon to 3 p.m., initially at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, then at the École normale supérieure, and finally at the Paris law school. On November 7, 1955, in Vienna, he introduced his call for a "return to Freud," which met with tremendous success. Interest in the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss and structuralism during the 1960s contributed to the dissemination of a conception of psychoanalysis unrelated to psychology and without any therapeutic aims (in 1957 Lacan had spoken of "excessive healing"). The impact of Lacan's ideas can be judged from the October 1960 Sixth Colloque de Bonneval, organized by Henri Ey on the unconscious. In the presence of Jean Hyppolite, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eugène Minkowski, Henri Lefebvre, and Paul Ricoeur, members of the two societies confronted one another. In that setting the work of a number of hitherto unknown psychoanalysts came to light: André Green and Conrad Stein of the Société psychanalytique de Paris, and Jean Laplanche, Serge Leclaire, and François Perrier of the Société française de psychanalyse.

Lacan's success guaranteed him a role within the Société française de psychanalyse that did not always sit well with his colleagues, especially since his theoretical development, together with the unusual nature of his personal practice, made him persona non grata within the traditional international psychoanalytic community. There were increasing conflicts within the SFP over Lacan, and these grew worse as the conditions for the society's readmission to the Institut de psychosomatique were communicated to him in 1961 during the twenty-second international congress in Edinburgh, just as it received the status of a study group. The SFP was asked to adhere to the guidelines for didactic analysis and training (four sessions of forty-five minutes per week and a year of therapy after the beginning of supervised therapy). Everyone knew that Lacan would never accept these requirements.

In spite of diplomatic efforts by the three-member group within the SFP known as the "troika"—Wladimir Granoff, Serge Leclaire, and François Perrier—the situation grew worse until several members of the SFP, including some of Lacan's former analysts, urged that he, along with Françoise Dolto, be removed from the list of teaching analysts, a decision that was ratified in November 1963. This led to a split within the SFP. One group of members formed the Association psychanalytique de France (French Psychoanalytic Association), which chose Daniel Lagache as its first president and was accredited by the Institut de psychosomatique on July 28, 1965, during the twenty-fourth international congress in Amsterdam.

On June 21, 1964, Lacan founded theÉcole Freudienne de Paris (EFP; Freudian School of Paris), which, over a period of sixteen years, became one of the leading forces in the French psychoanalytic movement. Organized into groups known as "cartels," it published an annual list of members. This did not mean that the organization recognized them as psychoanalysts, for according to Lacan, "The psychoanalyst's authority can only come from himself." Since the school was intent on making a difference within the psychoanalytic community, some members were designated "EFP analysts," and on October 9, 1967, Lacan instituted a test to enable members to obtain the title. As a result of this action, Piera Aulagnier, François Perrier, and Jean-Paul Valabrega quit theÉcole Freudienne de Paris in January 1969 to create the Quatrième groupe, Organisation psychanalytique de langue française (The Fourth Group, or Francophone Psychoanalytic Organization). (Piera Aulagnier, in 1967, founded, together with Jean Clavreul and Conrad Stein, the journal L'inconscient, of which only eight issues were published.) This group introduced new criteria of membership admission and methods of training: "the fourth analysis."

Lacan's claim that "the unconscious is structured like a language" helped rally to the cause of psychoanalysis Marxists like Louis Althusser and several priests, including the Jesuit Louis Beirnaert. Subsequently, the French Communist Party and the Catholic clergy, both of which had been hostile to Lacan, softened their position. More significantly, Lacan won over to his cause the French intelligentsia, along with a number of foreign students, thereby mobilizing the forces for a media campaign unique in the field of psychoanalysis.

The ground for Lacan's success had already been prepared, as Serge Moscovici showed in his dissertation, "La psychanalyse: Son image et son public" (Psychoanalysis: its image and public), completed in 1961. In 1958 Jean-Paul Sartre worked on the screenplay for the first film about Freud. Freud: The Secret Passion, directed by John Huston, appeared in movie theaters in 1962. Between December 1962 and July 1963, Marthe Robert presented a series of radio broadcasts titled The Psychoanalytic Revolution: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.

The literature on psychoanalysis began to grow. The Presses universitaires de France published Freud's letters to Wilhelm Fliess and Ernest Jones's biography of Freud in its series Bibliothèque de psychanalyse (Library of Psychoanalysis), edited by Daniel Lagache and later Jean Laplanche. In 1961 Gérard Mendel founded the series Science de l'homme (Science of Man) atÉditions Payot. This was followed, in 1964, by the series Le champ Freudien (The Freudian Field), edited by Jacques Lacan, then by Jacques-Alain Miller, atÉditions du Seuil, and in 1973 by L'espace analytique (The Analytic Space), edited by Maud Mannoni and Patrick Guyomard at Denoël. This last press published memoirs about Vienna and the early years of psychoanalysis in its series Freud et son temps (Freud and His Time), edited by Jacqueline Rousseau-Dujardin. Gallimard launched the series Connaissance de l'inconscient (Knowledge of the Unconscious), edited by Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, as well as the journal Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, which appeared in the spring of 1970 (it ceased publication in the fall of 1994 with number 50). Laplanche and Pontalis were also the authors of the celebrated Language of psychoanalysis, first published in 1967. A number of academic journals were launched at this time: Cahiers pour l'analyse in 1966, Scilicet in 1968, Topique andÉtudes freudiennes in 1969, Ornicar? in 1975, Confrontation in 1979, and L'écrit du temps in 1982. In 1965 Paul Ricoeur published De l'interprétation: Essai sur Freud, an example of what was most attractive about psychoanalysis to philosophers and academics.

Jacques Lacan'sÉcrits appeared at the end of 1966 as part of the series Le champ freudien, published by Éditions du Seuil. The book achieved considerable success with the public in spite of the difficulty of the author's style and ideas. As the popularity and longevity of Lacan's seminars show, theÉcole Freudienne de Paris and Lacanian thought in general began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in French psychoanalytic circles. Lacan's ideas soon spread around the world, especially in South America.

The student movements of May 1968 were attracted to a Marxist version of Freud inspired by Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich. In October of that year the school reforms led to the creation of a department of psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII in Vincennes by Serge Leclaire and Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan's son-in-law, and a department of clinical social science at the University of Paris VII. In October 1968 Gérard Mendel, the founder of sociopsychoanalysis, published La révolte contre le père (A revolt against the father), an explanation of the student protests. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in 1969 there appeared L'univers contestationnaire (The universe of conflict) by Béla Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, writing under the pseudonym André Stéphane.

Opposition to psychoanalysis arose with the publication in 1969 in Les temps modernes of "L'homme au magnétophone" (The man with a tape recorder), with a commentary by Jean-Paul Sartre. Its publication led Jean-Bertrand Pontalis to resign from the journal's editorial board. In 1972, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari published Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and Pierre Debray-Ritzen published La scholastique freudienne, a caricature of past, present, and future criticisms of psychoanalysis in France.

In the 1970s the French psychoanalytic movement split into mutually exclusive factions. In 1974 René Major and Dominique Geahchan created the group Confrontation, which claimed to be independent of the various psychoanalytic societies but over time grew closer to the Lacanians. They organized animated discussions led by Serge Leclaire (1977) and representatives of the French feminist movement, led by Antoinette Fouque (1979). Although theoretical and clinical advances continued to be made in the Société françaisedepsychanalyseandthe Association psychanalytique de France, as well as the Quatrième groupe, public and media attention focused on Jacques Lacan and his students.

With age, Lacan's health and productivity declined. Jacques-Alain Miller undertook the publication of an "official" transcript of Lacan's seminars (often contested by Miller's adversaries) and assumed a guiding role in managing theÉcole Freudienne de Paris, which displeased Lacan's older students. In the face of all this dissension, Lacan, by now quite ill, ordered his school dissolved on January 5, 1980. This led to a court trial and the division of his followers into mutually hostile groups. In his letter to the thousand, Lacan announced, on February 21, 1980, the foundation of the Cause Freudienne. Shortly thereafter Jacques-Alain Miller founded theÉcole de la cause Freudienne. In the years that followed the school developed an international reputation and became especially well established in South America. Jacques Lacan died on September 9, 1981.

In November 1980 Dominique Geahchan helped create the Collège de psychanalystes (Council of Psychoanalysts), which, despite its name, was not a training organization. It ceased functioning in June 1994. Following the dissolution of theÉcole Freudienne de Paris, several new groups came into existence: in 1982 the Cercle Freudien (Freudian Circle) and the Association Freudienne internationale (International Freudian Association); in 1983 the Cartels constituants de l'analyse Freudienne (Constituent Cartels for Freudian Analysis), the Convention psychanalytique (Psycho-analytic Convention), and the Mouvement du coût Freudien (Freudian Cost Movement) theÉcole Lacanienne de psychanalyse (Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis); and in 1986 the Séminaires psychanalytiques de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Seminars). Also in 1982 the Centre de formation et de recherches psychanalytiques (Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) formed around Octave and Maud Mannoni. Its dissolution in 1994 led to the creation, in 1995, of the Espace analytique (Analytic Space), of which Maud Mannoni was president until her death in 1998, and the Société de psychanalyse Freudienne (Freudian Society for Psychoanalysis), under the direction of Patrick Guyomard. Many of these associations were subject to internal dissension and disappeared (at least in their initial form) during the 1990s.

In France and elsewhere in the world, a crisis followed as a result of the excessive enthusiasm—in particular, excessive psychiatry and excessive ideology—generated by an idealized image of psychoanalysis. This enthusiasm was clearly associated with the personality and fame of Jacques Lacan. Subsequently, psychiatrists began to focus on the neurosciences. On another front, renewed enthusiasm for philosophy and religion led to a decline in interest in Freudian theory in the universities. Within the field of psychoanalysis, interactions over the years among the various psychoanalytic groups, which the first meetings of Confrontation had in its time attempted to establish, began to overcome the violent splits of the past.

The Société psychanalytique de Paris continued to assert its authority as the chief French psychoanalytic institution, partly through the increased readership of the Revue française de psychanalyse at a time when a number of publications ceased publication, many because of poor sales. In fact, the association came to be viewed as akin to a public institution by 1997. Around this time André Green became internationally well known for his writings on the "dead mother," "the narcissism of death," and "the negative," and Joyce McDougall became well known, especially in North America, for her work on the concept of normalcy and addiction. Although less well known, Conrad Stein, following the publication of his L'enfant imaginaire (The imaginary child; 1971) and the organization of a number of conferences throughÉtudes Freudiennes (Freudian Studies), continued his research on Freud and his criticism of the institutionalization of psychoanalysis.

Some APF members too made important contributions to the field. Worthy of mention are Guy Rosolato's work on the symbolic order and sacrifice, generalized seduction, and deferred action (a topic proposed by Jean Laplanche after a detailed reading of Freud); the theoretical work and fiction of Jean-Bertrand Pontalis; Daniel Widlöcher's work on change; and Didier Anzieu's research on Freud's self-analysis, the "skin ego," psychodrama, and group analysis, a field also investigated by René Kaës.

Through the publication of La violence de l'interprétation: Du pictogrammeà l'énoncé (The Violence of Interpretation: From Pictogram to Statement; 1975), Piera Aulagnier's work provided original theoretical material for understanding and treating psychosis (Mijolla-Mellor, 1998). Although somewhat less synthetic, the work of Octave and Maud Mannoni broadened the scope of psychoanalytic research, especially in the area of child psychoanalysis, a field greatly influenced by the work of Serge Lebovici, René Diatkine, and Michel Soulé. Françoise Dolto had a considerable impact on psychoanalysis in France through her original and provocative ideas, some of which generated considerable controversy. Her radio presentations and the creation of the Maisons vertes, psychoanalytic facilities for children, brought her considerable public recognition in France, and her books have remained successful.

A number of other authors—Béla Grunberger, Michel Fain, Jean Bergeret, Jean Guillaumin, Jean-Paul Valabrega, Serge Leclaire, François Perrier—made important contributions to specifically French psychoanalysis, which has been characterized by a tendency toward clinically based theorizations and is generally less empirical than the work of Anglo-American authors. In particular, Lacanian psychoanalysts have emphasized the importance of language and are probably closer to postwar French philosophy than any other branch of psychoanalysis. They have been influenced by thinkers as diverse as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida (who included psychoanalysis in the curriculum when he created the Collège de philosophie in 1983).

Psychoanalysts in France remain unlicensed in spite of several attempts by the government to institute licensing. Although psychoanalysts have managed to obtain a number of rights as private practitioners through psychoanalytic associations, it is as accredited psychologists that they are authorized to practice psychotherapy and analysis. The attempt in December 1989 by Serge Lebovici, then head of the Association pour une instance, to create a professional body consolidating all psychoanalysts in France was rebuffed by associations that were members of the International Psychoanalytical Association. These organizations had no desire to merge with the numerous practitioners operating in the Lacanian tradition, because they felt that training requirements in this tradition were inadequate.

There has been considerable interest in the history of psychoanalysis as well. In June 1985 the Association internationale d'histoire de la psychanalyse (International Association for the History of Psychoanalysis) was created. In 1984 this association merged with the Société internationale d'histoire de la psychiatrie (International Society for the History of Psychiatry), created in 1982, to became the Société internationale d'histoire de la psychiatrie et de la psychanalyse. In 1991, encouraged by Joseph Sandler, the International Psychoanalytical Association formed an Archives and History Committee within its organization.

French developments in psychoanalysis have also expanded and exerted influence outside the country. One sign of this is the election, in 1999, of Daniel Widlöcher as president of the International Psychoanalytical Association and of Alain Gibeault as secretary general, both of whom are French. Although no other French theoretician has achieved Jacques Lacan's global recognition or, like Lacan, has created schools and institutions, the body of theoretical and clinical research in French is considerable. In spite of the often irreconcilable differences within the French psychoanalytic community, this work has continued to enrich the development of psychoanalysis throughout the world.

References

  • Mijolla, Alain de. (1982). La psychanalyse en France, 1893-1965. In Roland Jaccard (Ed.), Histoire de la psychanalyse (Vol. 2, pp. 9-105). Paris: Hachette.
  • ——. (1984). Quelques avatars de la psychanalyse en France.Évolution psychiatrique, 49 (3), 773-795.
  • ——. (1985). Pulsion d'investigation, fantasmes d'identification et roman familial. Topique, 34, 33-59.
  • ——. (1988a). Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in France between 1939 and 1945. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 12, 136-156, 2003.
  • ——. (1988b). Quelques aperçus sur le rôle de la princesse Marie Bonaparte dans la création de la Société psychanalytique de Paris. Revue française de psychanalyse, 52 (5): 1197-1214.
  • ——. (1991). L'édition en français des œuvres de Freud avant 1940: Autour de quelques documents nouveaux. Revue internationale d'histoire de la psychanalyse, 4, 209-270.
  • ——. (1992). France, 1893-1965. In Peter Kutter (Ed.), Psychoanalysis international: a guide to psychoanalysis throughout the world, Vol. 1: Europe (pp. 66-113). Stuttgart, Germany: Frommann-Holzboog.
  • ——. (1996). La scission de la Société psychanalytique de Paris en 1953: quelques notes pour un rappel historique. Cliniques méditerranéennes, 49/50, 9-30.
  • Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie de. (1998). Penser la psychose: Une lecture de l'œuvre de Piera Aulagnier. Paris: Dunod.
  • Roudinesco,Élisabeth. (1990). Jacques Lacan & Co.: A history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985 (Jeffrey Mehlman, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published in two vols., 1982, 1986.)