Reading French Psychoanalysis
An anthology with commentary opening up the French tradition to English readers.
Lacan's famous challenge for French psychoanalysts to 'return to Freud' meant a return to the early Freud, the Freud who uncovered the ego's problem with the truth, which nonetheless could be discovered through listening to the speech of the patient.
Reading French Psychoanalysis assembles representative papers from the French Psychoanalytical Association and the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, each set within editorial commentary that situates the writer and the argument for an English-language reader. Dana Birksted-Breen and Sara Flanders write from the British side, viewing the material from outside; Alain Gibeault explains it from within the French discourse. A long general introduction tracks how the field moved after Lacan and states the case for a distinct French way of working.
The collection groups its authors around metapsychology, the drives, sexuality, representation, and the analytic setting, with contributions from Green, Laplanche, McDougall, Aulagnier, and others. The commentary marks where French usage of transference, regression, and the unconscious diverges from British and North American habits.
For the clinician it supplies primary texts often untranslated or scattered, and a map for reading them: what each analyst is reacting to, and how the concepts bear on listening and interpretation in the session.
About the authors
Dana Birksted-Breen
Dana Birksted-Breen was a British psychoanalyst, a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, which elected her a Distinguished Fellow in 2022. She edited the International Journal of Psychoanalysis for fifteen years, serving as co-editor in chief from 2007 and as sole editor in chief until 2022, and was General Editor of the New Library of Psychoanalysis. She co-edited Reading French Psychoanalysis and wrote on gender, femininity, and the analytic setting. She died on 1 June 2024.
Sara Flanders
Sara Flanders is a psychoanalyst and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is known for editorial work that brings French psychoanalytic thought to English readers. She edited The Dream Discourse Today (Routledge, 1993), which gathered American, British and French papers on the analysis of dreams in clinical practice, and she co-edited Reading French Psychoanalysis (2010) with Dana Birksted-Breen and Alain Gibeault, an overview of French psychoanalytic debate since Lacan.
Alain Gibeault
Alain Gibeault is a French psychoanalyst, a training and supervising analyst of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP). He formerly directed the Evelyne and Jean Kestemberg Centre for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, served as president of the European Psychoanalytical Federation, and was secretary general of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He co-edited "Reading French Psychoanalysis" and is known for his work on symbolisation, sublimation and psychoanalytic psychodrama with psychotic patients, including group settings.
Details
- 2010
- Routledge
- Routledge
- 840
- 9780415485036