Psychoanalytic Politics PSYCHOANALYTIC POLITICS Freud’s French Revolution SHERRY TURKLE Basic Books, Inc., Publishers NEW YORK ‘ ‘In Memory o f Sigmund Freud” reprinted by permission from Collected Poems, by W . H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson (New York: Random House, 1976). Copyright© 1940, 1968 by W. H. Auden. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Turkle, Sherry. Psychoanalytic politics. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Psychoanalysis— France. 2. Psychoanalysis— Social aspects— France. 3. Psychoanalysis— France— Political aspects. 4. Lacan, Jacques, 1901- 5. France— History— 20th century. I. Title. BF175.T87 I50'.I9'520944 78-54494 ISBN: 0-465-06607-0 Copyright © 1978 by Basic Books, Inc. Printed in the United States of America DESIGNED BY VINCENT TORRE 10 987654321 Edith Bonowitz and Harriet Turkle Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction Freud’s French Revolution PART ONE The French Freud Chapter i The Social Roots of Psychoanalytic Culture Chapter 2 “ Reinventing” Freud in France Chapter 3 May 1968 and Psychoanalytic Ideology PART TWO Politics in Psychoanalysis Chapter 4 For or Against Lacan Chapter 5 Psychoanalytic Societies and Psychoanalytic Science PART THREE Psychoanalysis in Politics Chapter 6 Psychoanalysis as Schizoanalysis: Antipsychiatry Chapter 7 Psychoanalysis as Science: The University PART FOUR Psychoanalysis in Popular Culture Chapter 8 Psychoanalysis as Popular Culture: The Perils of Popularity 191 Chapter 9 ‘ 'Saving French Freud’ ’ 210 Conclusion From May 1968 to the New Philosophy 225 Epilogue Lacan in America: Poetry and Science 234 NOTES 249 INDEX 269 Acknowledgments THIS BOOK is about the emergence of a psychoanalytic culture. The themes raised by this sociology of a science of mind are not unique to any one place or time, but this book deals with a specific case, that of France in recent years. It grew out of a field experience in that country, and my greatest debt is, of course, to all my French informants who shared their experiences and opinions with me as well as their kindness, hospitality, and humour. In the world of French psychoanalytic culture, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has so special and central a role that his willingness to participate in my research, to discuss contemporary psychoanalytic history with me, was of crucial importance to my work. I am deeply grateful for his cooperation. Of course, I owe a similar debt to my many other informants, who included nearly one hundred fifty practicing French psychoanalysts, each of whom added a new dimension to the story. But a rather special problem makes it difficult for me to thank them in the usual manner. Psychoanalytic history has been explosive, schismatic, deeply personal. Its controversies have often been played out in personal denunciations and more “ political” sanctions, excommunications, and schisms within the framework of psychoanalytic institutions. In France, the story has been particularly stormy; conversations about it often carried a high emotional charge. Among my informants, some preferred that their names not be mentioned in any reporting of my work. Since the absence of a name can convey as much information as its presence, a traditional list of acknowledgments seemed disrespectful of the privacy of those who had helped me. So, with the exception of Lacan whose special role demanded that his cooperation be acknowledged, I shall not thank my informants individually for their help, but I hope that each appreciates the depth of my gratitude. I have also followed the consistent policy in the text of not attributing quotations that come from my interview work, although, of course, I always cite an author when I draw from the public record. I also owe thanks to many teachers and colleagues in the United States. George Goethals, George Homans, Stanley Hoffmann, Stanley King, and Laurence Wylie of Harvard University encouraged me to pursue my doctoral studies of the French Freud along a fieldwork model and gave me excellent advice and criticism as my work progressed. I have a special debt to David and Evey Riesman who offered thoughtful criticism as well as confidence and consideration through the years of researching and writing this book. I also profited from comments on earlier drafts and on sections of this book by Daniel Bell, John Berlow, Saul Friedlander, Nathan Hale, Carl Kaysen, Kenneth Keniston, Mar­ tin Kessler, Leo Marx, David Misunas, Farrell Phillips, and Nancy Rosenblum. I was fortunate during my field experience to have had the friend­ ship of two extraordinary Frenchwomen, Anne Fresco and Janine Maucorps, who made dépaysement less painful. On my return to the United States, the difficulties and frustrations of writing were made considerably easier by Mildred Bonowitz, Robert Bonowitz, and Susan Marsten. My husband Seymour Papert has been a continual source of love, support, and good ideas. In my moments of discouragement he helped me to put one foot in front of the other; in my moments of energy and enthusiasm he encouraged me to ask more of myself. Cambridge, Massachusetts August 1978 Psychoanalytic Politics Introduction Freud’ s French Revolution URING May and June 1968, French society experienced a social explosion of near revolutionary proportions. A student protest in the Department of Sociology at the University of Paris at Nanterre had escalated into a social movement that struck at every level of French so­ ciety. In the space of weeks, not only the universities, but the factories, the theaters, the high schools, and the hospitals, too, were on strike. People rejected the authority not only of the government and the em­ ployer, but of the traditional Opposition— the Left political parties and trade unions as well. The turbulent May days created the impression of a vacuum of power which made it look— if only for a short time— as if control of the French state could be taken by any group with sufficient organization and will. France was gripped by a paroxysm of the spoken word. There were confrontations and attempts at communication across generational and class lines that were unparalleled in her recent national life. The spirit of the May days was utopian, expressive, and festive. The ideology of the celebrants was to avoid traditional ideology. The fresh outlook of May downplayed traditional forms of structured politi­ cal action and stressed an existential revolution of the person. For most participants, May-June 1968 was a deeply moving personal experience, yet the May events, judged by standard revolutionary politi­ cal criteria, were a failure. Power was not seized; within a few weeks, life in France returned to normal. The public buildings that had been oc­ cupied were washed and put back into order, the ubiquitous posters were stripped away, and the graffiti were sandblasted from the walls. By mid-June, Paris was cleaned up and returned to the tourists, its cob­ blestones paved over— building blocks of the barricades frozen in cement. At the time, observers of the French scene searched in vain for traces of the May events on French life. In this book we will describe ways in which May 1968 marked and gave momentum to a profound though not immediately visible kind of change: the dramatic reversal of the rela­ tionship between psychoanalysis and French society and culture. In the course of the 1960s, the French attitude toward psychoanalysis swung from denigration and resistance to infatuation in one of the most dra­ matic social reversals of an intellectual position in modem history. Until recently, it had been commonplace in twentieth-century intellectual his­ tory to contrast the American ‘ ‘overacceptance of psychoanalysis ’ ’ with France’s violent and sustained rejection of it. In fact, the first to com­ ment on the differences in the fate of psychoanalysis in France and America was Freud himself. When Freud came to America in 1909, he was amazed. After con­ fronting the skepticism of the medical and scientific communities in Europe, Freud found the America of 1909 a welcome terrain. Professors at Clark University seemed astoundingly unprejudiced and open, even to the point of giving psychoanalysis a place in their lectures at a time when their European counterparts were ignorant or scornful of the new doctrine. “ In prudish America,” remarked Freud, “ it was possible, at least in academic circles, to discuss freely and scientifically everything that in ordinary life is regarded as objectionable.” 1 In the capitals of Europe, the situation was reversed: life was “ sophisticated” and the universities puritanical. Freud could only wonder at the attitude of the Americans: “ They don’t understand that I am bringing them the plague.” Only five years after his American visit, Freud noted that something was going wrong in America. Americans were accepting psychoana­ lysis too easily, and Freud took this as a sure sign that they were misun­ derstanding it, watering it down, and sweetening it to their taste. To his mind, if the Americans really had been accepting the theory of infantile sexuality, for example, things would not have been going so smoothly. Freud believed that too easy an acceptance meant that psychoanalysis was being denatured, and he also believed the converse: resistance to psychoanalysis suggested that it was being taken seriously. For Freud, psychoanalysis was so deeply subversive of common-sense ways of thinking about the world that to understand it was to resist it. It was for this reason that Freud wrote that “ the final decisive battle” for psycho­ analysis would be played out “ where the greatest resistance has been displayed.” 2 By 1914, it was already clear that it was in France, country of Mes­ mer, Bernheim, Charcot, Bergson, and Janet, with its long literary tradition of exquisite sensitivity to the psychological, that resistance to psychoanalysis was the greatest. French philosophers preferred Henri Bergson, the French Church found it morally unacceptable, and French scientists found it shabby. Only the surrealists, who distorted and poet­ icized the theory to their taste and almost beyond Freud’s recognition, had anything good to say about psychoanalysis.