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- Mr GREEN SPEAKS ABOUT JACQUES LACAN
- FOR PSYCHIATRY, by Sophie Bialek
- COGNITIVISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS, BY Eric Laurent
- CINEMA REVIEW, by Anne-Sophie Janus
- REPORT FROM NEW YORK, by Julia Richards
- CHRISTIAN JAMBET ON THE JIHAD, by Anaelle Lebovits
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Mr GREEN SPEAKS ABOUT JACQUES LACAN
Paris, Nov. 15 (LPA) Agency correspondence . Opening session of the
CNS Congress centred on the « Lacan years », on November 13. Mr
Andre Green introduced himself as « His Majestys opponent ».
He also voiced his refusal to "mouthfeed the lacanians".
This summoning of the oral object at the end of his exposition was consistent
with its content : a series of judgements on taste. The audience was thus informed
that Mr Green was fond of tete-a-tete breakfasts with Lacan in the sixties,
that he did not like the tone in which Lacan used to ask Serge Leclaire to erase
the board, etc. The general mood of this exposition may be described as morose.
The speaker faithfully admitted that his taste was not shared, and that Jacques
Lacan was increasingly read and appreciated in the member Societies of the International
psychoanalytic association. He added: "Success means nothing." He
showed his colleagues indulging in the mistake of too much reading of Lacan
thus: "Latin America is a great consumer of psychoanalytic systems. I have
seen psychoanalytic societies move on from Freud to Klein, then to Bion, then
Kohut, then to Lacan as reference systems".
The LPA will acquiesce to give Mr Green the right to reply if he should wish
to amend or complete our report.
Translated by Liliana Mauas-Singer
FOR PSYCHIATRY
Paris, Nov. 15 (LPA) Sophie Bialek, member of the ECF, sent us a copy
of the letter she addressed to « La Lettre de Psychiatrie Francaise »
» « In his editorial of September 2001, Christian Vasseur rightly
calls for « a true, in-depth, a reorganisation of psychiatry and mental
health ». For this purpose, he seeks for a renewed link with the spirit
of debate and elaboration for which French psychiatry is known in the course
of its scientific history. » The following comments are definitely made
in the light of this perspective.
I believe, indeed, that the difficulties that arose lately in connection with
public authorities and regularly reported in your publication, originate essentially
in a point of wrongful acknowledgment embedded at the heart of French institutional
psychiatry. Christian Vasseur remarks that "psychiatry, supporting itself
from the beginning on a psycho-dynamic approach of mental phenomena, imposed
itself as an autonomous medical specialty. This took shape in the 1968 separation
between neurology and psychiatry. Not even the discovery of psychotropic agents
in 1952 had questioned this evolution: there was only a change in the direction
of advances in institutional psychotherapy at the time to include these new
tools. » I admit that I cannot entirely agree with this conception, and
I will give the reasons.
Couldnt we consider, for instance, that the reintegration of psychiatry
to the heart of scientific medicine and under the leadership of neuroscience
that occurred in the eighties (suppression of the competition for admission
to internship at psychiatric hospitals, integration of psychiatry in the medical
school syllabus as just another additional specialty) rather indicated, on the
contrary, the disappearance of this "autonomous specialty" status
conquered in 68? This is at least my point of view.
I am not at all unaware of what constitutes, in my opinion, the historical
context of these reforms in the eighties ; namely, the promotion of the DSMIII,
parallel to the empowerment of biological psychiatry at the expense of psychoanalysis.
French psychiatrists, sustained by their clinical tradition and their loyalty
to the founding fathers of the specialty policy for some of them loyalty
to someone called J. Lacan could for some time (and perhaps even today)
believe they were safe from the consequences of this mutation. This belief originates
in a form of blindness, in my opinion. We are all able to see the full consequences
today. What is happening, particularly since the beginning of the nineties,
if not a powerful rise of a unified clinic of depression correlated to accelerated
systematisation of antidepressant prescriptions as verified in all practice
areas of our discipline.
France is the number one world consumer of psychotropic agents; Prozac is the
third most prescribed drug in France all specialties altogether
closely followed by Paxil. Quite a gloomy balance.
The supporters of institutional psychotherapy have certainly
« integrated » psychotropic agents as a new tool, yet the question
is : where exactly ? The thing remains to this day, amazingly veiled. No knowledge
has ever been elaborated by them on this subject. Hospital psychiatry has thus
left in the hands of biological psychiatry the sole responsibility to establish
and dictate the use of psychotropic agents and to impose a clinic of drugs of
which Major Depressive Disorder is presently the inept misadventure. In a field
induced by uncontrolled pharmaceutical dynamics, institutional psychiatry is
limited to function as social work.
Who is today in better capacity than psychiatrist in the field to appreciate
the damage wrought by mental health policies dictated by the contemporary imperative
of wellbeing ? Who could better testify on the future of this psychotic subject
in his charge at times justly qualified by one of my colleagues as cosmetic
psychiatry? "He is doing better, he smiles", this is what a psychiatrist
in the field recently announced to the dazzled family of a psychotic patient
on antidepressants for eight days
How does the psychiatrist conceive the
future of his mission? As an agent of mood lifting?
French psychiatry will not enter the third millennium unless it restores a
differential clinic of psychoses, even one running against present trends, that
will promote reasoned use of psychotropics. The prime condition for the establishment
of this differential clinic is that depressive mood be relocated in the right
place. This will not happen without involving a recalculation of the place of
hospitalization in the health care system. The duration of hospitalization seems
to be increasingly determined by the lag time of antidepressants. The wife of
a paranoid patient readmitted after a suicide attempt three days after release
from the general hospital at the end of three weeks of antidepressant medication
asked the following question : « I am told he is given a treatment that
takes three weeks to produce effects. Why dont they wait to see what happens?"
This is just one testimony among others in my daily practice.
.In the absence of a clinically founded approach to our practices, psychotherapy
included, psychiatry will be left at the mercy of the accounting logic of the
modern master, with no other objection than some not far-reaching humanistic
protest. It is essentially the psychiatrists responsibility to cope with
this problem.
Translated by Liliana Mauas-Singer
COGNITIVISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Paris, Nov. 11 (ALP) The idea that the human subject and his mind can
be reduced to an apparatus of adaptation to the world is a doctrine which supposes
a good many false facts. It makes it difficult to situate what can be attributed
to the rejection of the world or to mental reservation. It implies the presupposition
that the human subject, confronted with his own interests, a puritan variant
of the good, will adapt spontaneously to it. It is enough that this presupposition
be secularly emancipated from the idea of evil, that the problems the "akratia"
reserved for Aristotle be forgotten, that finally we want to account "scientifically"
for the contents of the subjects conscience for the inanity to be complete.
This is what renders ridiculous the essays of psychology about the "sleeping"
terrorist or spy, a term admitted into English in the 1950s, as William
Safire notes in his November 12th column. The French prefer the metaphor of
the "mole", of a more dreamy tradition. The CIA, which shares the
psychological university presuppositions of behaviourism under its cognitivist
form, trusts lie detectors to sound the hearts and the souls of its agents.
This is why the presence within its ranks of high-level moles such as Aldrich
Ames was only revealed by the collapse of the Russian bureaucracy. A complete
surprise! The disarray that the commentaries following the revelation attest
to augur todays problems.
By escaping detection despite the technical refinements of satellites and phone-taps,
the case of Mohamed Atta and his friends poses serious problems for this "scientific"
psychology. How could Egyptian families become acquainted with the West, its
customs and its practices for three generations, find their place in the society
of technology, and then end up by rejecting it? Why did their sons, supported
by the most outspoken familial ambition, choose to cut themselves off from this
society with such determination, choosing to die, without letting anything show?
Everyone should reread, with Freud, who so much appreciated him, Dostoievski,
who added to the catalogue of Shakespearean passions the description of the
great nihilist passion. The readers of the ALP have already read Jacques-Alain
Millers letter dated September 19, 2001, entitled "The Tenderness
of Terrorists". A distinction must certainly be made between the nihilist
suicide and the mystical suicides of those who are annihilated by their belief
in intoxicating paradises. It is no less true that the mental reserve of those
who prepare for it effectively deserves to be studied. How can we not consider
with Freud and Lacan that the truth of the subject is manifested above all in
the lie. The psychoanalytic discipline is not a continuation of the confessional,
as Michel Foucault once thought. If we wish to relate it to a religious framework
of Catholic origin, it would be better to put it in the place reserved for the
"mental restriction characteristic of Christian humanism and for which
the admirable moralists the Jesuits were so long criticised for having codified
its use." (Lacan)
What then can we learn from the cognitive approach of the lie and how can it
orient us within the mystery of our "fellow-beings"? Daniel Dennett,
an eminent professor of "cognitive studies" is in Paris this week
to give the "Jean Nicod Lectures". It is the occasion to listen to
him and recall what he wrote ten years ago in his book "Conscience explained",
very well translated by Pascal Engel: "My smug optimism pushes me to suppose
that the answers we must bring, in the domain of ontology, concerning the results
of fiction, do not pose the slightest profound philosophical problem: fiction
is fiction; there is no Sherlock Holmes". [translated into English from
the French translation] During our troubled times where smug optimism is no
longer in style, it might be that it is conscience that poses no profound problem
and the fictions named Ames, Atta or Romand (cf the film "LEmploi
du temps" which has just come out) lead us to ask vital questions about
the belief in the Other that sustains the subject in his world.
Translated by Thelma Sowley
CINEMA REVIEW
Paris, 21 October. (LPA). Nothing seen in Hiroshima? "H
Story", of Nobuhiro Suwa. In our days, a movie making team directed by
the Japanese film director (Nobuhiro Suwa, playing himself) work in vain to
remake "Hiroshima mon amour". The shooting finished prematurely, and
this project will not see the light of day. By this inability to say and to
show Hiroshima birthplace city of the film director "H Story"
is born, "work in progress" out of the ruins of a film which was never
finished. "H Story" is an articulation of two moments, the "making
of" of the interrupted shootings and the saving outcome.
The first part of "H Story" takes the form of a rudimentary pre-montage,
by juxtaposing the rushes of the remake. Long flat-sequences follow one another,
limited by mute outlines, variations of light, cameras ready to shoot, clap-boards
and announcements. These blocks units of action, of place and of time
are knotted together impassively and then are, from time to time, introduced
by photographs in black and white extracted from the film of Alain Resnais.
Beatrice (Beatrice Mow) holds the role of Emmanuelle Riva. Engaged in a dangerous
body to body with the text (the original text of Marguerite Duras), she multiplies
confusions and lapses of memory. As she confesses, she does not know what she
is saying. By force of the repetitions, she becomes deaf to the words of the
text, insensitive to their sense. Already isolated linguistically she is threatened
to become a foreigner to her own tongue.
At the half way mark, "H Story" swings. A linking sequence raises
the question of the oversight and brings the film to a dead end. At the end
of a long night of filming, Beatrice is destroyed, physically and morally; she
knows no more, she is not able to say the first line of its text: "It is
horrible, I am beginning to not remember you".
"Hiroshima mon amour" is therefore, forgotten, the weight of the
memory of this film drains. Thus, it can begin a true dialogue with the city.
Beatrice, who usually never leaves the hotel, ventures to the street. Up till
now, the camera only filmed very close planes, extracting the faces and the
bodies from the environment. Now it goes backwards, and shows us the young woman,
reconciled with herself, to discover and to live Hiroshima.
"H Story", an experimental and hybrid film, is carried out with the
driving force of oblivion.
Paris, 5 of November , (LPA) Of Water and of Fire: "The Deep End",
of David Siegel and Scott McGhee.
Margaret deplores the bad companions of her son. She hopes to withdraw him
from the ill fated charm of Reese, lover of the adolescent and wastrel owner
of a night club. The film is opened with the confrontation between the mother
and the seducer. Taken to the anteroom of the "Deep End", Margaret
expects to find Reese. A door is opened, and the light of the day streams in.
Overexposed and blinded, Margaret carries her hand to her eyes. This sudden
flaring up of the image sets the wick of the narrative on fire and initiates
a chain reaction for an hour forty minutes.
Devout and peaceful mother of the family, disturbed by the events that she
fails to grasp, Margaret is shaken. She submerges in the turbulent waters of
crime and risks shattering in the reefs to protect her son. Roused by maternal
love, she rediscovers a steel-like strength. Carried along by powerful currents,
she rebounds in each dramatic episode, slipping on each incident to the epilogue.
A metallic look with a coldness and a corrosive roughness; blue iced pupils,
burning braziers from which a blind determination arises; and a face as pale
as a spectre which makes her red hair blaze: in Margaret the opposites fuse.
Limpid and opaque, reflexive and dynamic, she is water and fire. She oscillates
from time to time between an asexual mother with a serious air to a fatal seductress
all dressed in red.
Water is a predominant element: the film of Siegel and McGhee has a backdrop
of Lake Tahoe. Filmed at dawn, its cold and smooth surface is reflected. Filmed
at night, the blue reflections of its water undulate upon the bodies and the
faces. Symbol of the symbiosis between man and nature, it offers to the corpse
of Reese a magnificent aquatic burial: rocks perfectly polished by the erosion
emerge from the depths as stone tombs supported one against the other. Fire
is also present. It is above all the apparition of the sun beyond the mountains
and the sudden lighting of the landscape, of the extension of water and of Margaret.
It is the fire of the action that encourages the story and its people, to its
self-consumption, its resolution.
Some impossible tears to retain and a loving spark painfully suffocated. In
this way is closed this parenthesis, an episode of the life of a woman desperately
isolated in the bosom of an indifferent family, of an absent husband, of a son
who does not want to know, of a father-in-law who pretends not to understand.
Translated by Susana Tillet
Report from New York
Paris, Oct. 28 (ALP) Travelling in the northeast of the United States
during the second week of October for personal reasons, I was impressed by the
effects September 11th had on the American people.
At Charles De Gaulle-Roissy airport on September 11th, while waiting for the
boarding call for my flight to Washington, I was talking on the phone. While
listening with one ear to the phone, with my other ear I could hear the loudspeaker.
The announcement in French was not at all usual. I was sure not to have heard
right. "The American government has suspended all flights to the United
States". I hear the translation into English. Its worse. Im
sure Ive understood, but I cant assimilate it. At the counter, information
will be given. Passengers rush towards the airline staff. Reactions vary: "Was
there a nuclear bomb" a woman asks placidly, "Do you think well
be able to take off in two hours?" asks a man. In response to which I permit
myself to say "But youre dreaming, Sir!" I change my ticket
and, in anguish, leave the airport as quickly as possible to go to those I love.
Roissy-Charles De Gaulle, October 5: the same airline staff at the same posts
do the same work; theres something reassuring about that. On my arrival
in Dallas, I am attentive to the changes produced by this encounter with the
real. There is already one, personal: I accepted the offer of a member of my
family to make a three hour detour to come get me, thus avoiding taking a domestic
flight.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag
Everywhere the American flag is hanging, waving, quivering. It is more than
ever present: large-sized on the buildings, and various sized on the houses
and apartment windows, agitated banners on car antennas, discrete on lapels,
printed on t-shirts and caps. It is sold in kiosks by Americans of all ethnic
groups, at every street corner in Manhattan, from Mid-Town to Ground Zero. These
flags are both sad and proud: flags like Band-Aids, one for each wounded American.
of the United States of America
In the streets of Manhattan-the-ferocious, a crushing and inhuman city, the
people are courteous, with an unusual and spontaneous confidence, marked by
genuineness. The police officers in the city are patient with the crowds who
gather around the site. The women walk down the streets without clutching on
to their handbags. Everyone lets others go by, no one pushes any more. They
seem to be tied together, united, by shared pain.
and to the country for which it stands
A "country" is not necessarily described as a "political entity",
present in the French (post-revolutionary) sense of a nation. One is a land,
determined by its geography, its people; the other depends on the laws which
constitute it. For Americans, September 11th was not at all a symbolic act (that
the attack against the Pentagon would have constituted in itself). Americans
suffer from a wound inflicted on its country.
Do these Americans talk about September 11th? Of course, the radio and the
television are constantly developing theories. But do the people give their
version of September 11th? Yes, but with the same modesty, the same reserve
as someone who is brought to talk to a stranger of the serious illness of someone
close to him. It is delivered sparingly, because this real is intimate: a subject
to be brought up with tact. The journalist who called the Towers "the lungs
of America" seems closer to the reality of the American people, but I prefer
"the breasts of America". Source of their insouciance, their optimism,
of the paradox of their generosity and their egoism; the Stock market, Mother
Wall Street, was touched and, with her, her children
one nation
At Ground Zero, there are five floors of ruins which resemble one of Armans
enormous compressed sculptures. But above, there is a hole in the sky. This
hole does have a symbolic value for the country. It is that of the object. But
while historians are still debating to determine if the United States is a country
or not, if the notion of nation itself conserves its functional pertinence in
face of the mondialisation, will America be able to grasp onto this hole to
symbolise its nation?
under God, indivisible
This is where things havent gotten any better. The invocations to this
god, supposed to bless America, are still very much present. What will be the
extent of the effects in a country, the only one I know of, which engraves "In
God we trust" on its banknotes, in which "God bless America"
is sung at the opening of the Stock-market? I feel like saying that this country
has never symbolised its relation to money. Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked
for the creation of the economic rights of man in 1937. There has not (yet)
been any follow up on this proposal. Perhaps it would be a means of tying this
country into a nation: the law in place of economic caprice.
For the moment and for these reasons, in the eyes of a Ben Laden, the United
States occupies this provoking place of the child suspended at the breast Saint
Augustine speaks of. Has Ben Laden not, through terrorism, succeeded in posing
the terms necessary for a "holy", lets say "mad" war
against his foster-brother, in which each is interpellated by a small other
"terrorist", the war of Allah vs. dallah? ("dollar" pronounced
with a New York accent), waged by and against peoples deprived of the politics
of nations, at a time when the notion of nation is questioned by the effects
of mondialization?
with liberty and justice for all."
In the taxi, I see the noon flow of pedestrians walking towards Mid-Town. The
gaze of each one passing falls, kiosk after kiosk, on the flags. What are they
thinking of? How can I know? As for myself, I am thinking about this pledge
of allegiance, repeated day after day, all through my childhood.
Translated by Thelma Sowley
CHRISTIAN JAMBET ON THE JIHAD
Paris, 15 of November (LPA) Christian Jambet, Professor
of Philosophy in the Lyceum J. Ferry and responsible for the conference in the
EPHE in religious sciences, on October 18 gave a conference on "The Islam
and the Jihad". This it is a summary of the thesis developed by the conferencist,
edited by Anaelle Lebovits.
The LPA is the unique body responsible for the eventual errors that could have
slipped into this dispatch.
Does the Koran prescribe the Jihad just as Bin Laden has spoken it? Before
responding to this question they should return to the Book itself. The Koran
is a reference for all the Moslems. However this book recognises all the revealed
books as the source of truth. Certainly, the Moslems do not accept the Bible
just as it is edited and read by the Jews and the Christians, suspicious of
falsified Books revealed to them. Still Mosses is the most cited prophet in
the Koran, that is to say that all good Muslims should have present in their
minds that Jews and Christians have the gift of a revealed religion.
For the Muslims, the Revelation has in this way a history that begins with
Adam and finishes with Muhammad. This history is oriented and conducts to a
term (sura 42, ayat 51), which explains the permanent relation of Islam with
the previous books, the text of the Koran goes back to the starting point and
end of this history. On the other hand, the Koran is a demonstration of the
divine word, of a Hidden God.
The Muslims can only affirm one thing of God: "There is no other divinity
than God" (S.112, A.1), in other words, God is one. As a book, the Koran
has therefore, a letter, but being the expression of the infinite word of God,
has especially a hidden sense that corresponds to the supersensible reality
of its enunciator. Therefore it calls for hermeneutics. We note in this regard
that there is no Muslim orthodoxy. The only point upon which all the Muslims
agree is that no reading could be neutral. This fundamental principle to all
the religions is known as the Book, is therefore rejected and denied by the
Sunnites Wahhabites integrists, of which Bin Laden the young man was made a
knight. Rejecting every principle of exegesis, they reject every reading of
the Koran. By doing it they set the text in a "letter" that no longer
can be deciphered, but that has the value of a universal law.
The Wahhabite School, as we have seen , advocates the rarefaction of speech
and suspends the right to intelligence. But the call to the Jihad, is it or
is it not a call to hatred and to the destruction of the Other? According to
the letter, there is no commandment that indicates in an obvious way what is
obligatory with regard to the Jihad and what it is not. The Sura 42 (A. 36-39)
enunciates however the major commandments (which will permit the believers the
access to Paradise), in which the call to the Jihad is not found. But this one
is present as a legal obligation (S.9, A. 29), and it is enunciated in these
terms: "Fight against those who do not believe in God to the last day".
But, in what sense must this exhortation be understood? The root of the term
Jihad signifies "to make an effort against, to apply oneself". However,
the Koran enunciates on the other hand this: "He who will make the effort
will only make it for himself". In this way we can understand that this
battle is a fight against the incredulity which allows each one to withdraw
from the unreality which threatens us`. The Jihad can be understood then as
a "battle" against itself, and the historic battle becomes then smaller
with respect to the effort to persevere in its islamic-self that which the Koran
prescribes. On the other hand, it is in the measurement in which the "battle"
against itself is carried out and is never completely won that the
battle against the other is justified.
In the Wahhabites, this moral sense of the Jihad has disappeared, it only keeps
its warlike sense. This obedience to the letter, is insufficient for the Shiites,
while for the Sunnites it constitutes the lowest degree of the faith, the highest
degree is equivalent to effective reality.
On the other hand, the Jihad, in any way that it can be understood, supposes
the presence of a teacher appointed by the legitimate authority, that is to
say by the successor of the last prophet. However, for the diodecimain Shiites,
the Jihad could not be given direction because they do not have an Imam any
more, and concerning the Sunnites, the same thing occurs as there is no longer
a Caliph. The only legitimate authority that would be able today to call the
bellicose Jihad is the Agha Khan, the spiritual leader of the Islamites; but
he resigned to the Charria. Thus, since the 13th century , the Jihad was suspended
and the Muslim wars are wars among the people, that are not able to assume the
title of Jihad. It is consequently manifest that the Wahhabites and Bin Laden
himself assume a right that they do not have. The use of the term Jihad, removed
of every reference of legitimate authority, supposes for them the thesis that:
every Muslim derives his authorisation only from himself, he should be mujahid,
an actor of the Jihad. But, deriving authorisation from oneself is nothing if
it is not God's. Finally, he only derives authorisation from God.
Translated by Susana Tillet
PSYCHOANALYSIS TODAY
Paris, 2 November (LPA)- Seminar by Jean-Jacques Moscovitz, every
second Wednesday of the month. Bibliothèque Room, 4 place Saint Germain,
75006 Paris, "Feminine and masculine. Violence Mirror Filiation History
: a current approach to sexuality from the psychoanalytic point of view in Freud's
, Lacan's, texts and from texts and words of some of us and of some others.
Co-discussant: Nabile Fares, Michele Dolin, Tierry Perles.
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