Returns of the “French Freud” Freud, lacan, and beyond Edited by Todd Dufresne returns of the "french freud" freud, lacan, and beyond returns of the "french freud" freud, lacan, and beyond edited by Todd Dufresne ij Routledge ¡¡j^ Taylor£»FranosCroup LONDON AND NtW tt>RK Hint published 1997 by Routicdgc Publijbtd 2013 br Routlodgc 2 Park Situare, Milttm Park, Abingdon, Oren OX IA 4K.V 711 iKinl Avrnue, New Yn*. NY, 10017, USA fiputirtifr is <m imprint «ftkr /*>w>r <+ f-'mnfil Grnxf, an mjprma (nujnm Oopyriliht £> 1V^7 by Krajjtledjqc Dik;^ti: Jack Ehinner AJI tigbli «serwii No prr! uf this buuk iruy bt reprinted ut reproduced or ublixed in Any form uc by any eletfnjnic, methan>cal, or oit*cr m«ns, now known or hrifaltcr invented, including; photo­ copying anc recording* or in any iniotmaKm storage or retrieval system without |xrmission m writing from the puhlidw*- Libeary tif Congress Caialutgmg-in-f'ubfKatioa Data Returns of the “French freod’ I |cdited by] Todd Duirts«. p. an, todudes bihlic^/aphicil reference*. I. PsydwiniBlysí—Hiítnry. 1 Freud, j^mund, 1856-193?. 3, Lacan,. Jacques* 1901-1981, 4, Psychoanalysis—Franct 1. Dufreaie, Todii, 1%6- BF173.R4J2 ]m 150.19‘52'09—iJl20 95-15176 CTP Publisher’* Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to eiKure «he quality of Ihi* repiint but points out lit*i some imjmfeetions in the original may be appstenL ISBN 13: 97H 0415 91525 0 fhbkl ISBX 13s 97B O 415 9152* 7 I pMk l contents Acknowledgments vii 1 Introduction: Beyond the French Freud 1 2 Nietzsche, Freud, and the History of Psychoanalysis 11 Paul Roazen 3 Sublimation: Necessity and Impossibility 25 François Roustang 4 Fear of Birth: Freud's Femininity 35 Kelly Oliver 5 Can the Phallus Stand, or Should It Be Stood Up? 43 Tina Chanter 6 Lacan's Debt to Freud: How the Ratman Paid Off His Debt 67 John Forrester 7 Lacan, Sure—And Then What? 91 Daniel Bougnoux 8 "Mac" 107 Gary Genosko 9 Freud and His Followers, Or How Psychoanalysis 117 Brings Out The Worst in Everyone Todd Dufresne 10 "To Do justice to Freud": The History of Madness 133 in the Age of Psychoanalysis Jacques Derrida 11 The Witch Metapsychology 169 Rodolphe Gasché 12 Basta Cosi!: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen 209 on Psychoanalysis and Philosophy Interview by Chris Oakley References 229 Author Index 241 This page intentionally left blank acknowledgments A PROJECT OF THIS SORT DEPENDS UPON THE DIRECT AND INDIRECT GOODWILL of many people. Without the kind support of Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen this collection would not have materialized. My deepest appreciation to Clara Sacchetti for reading and correcting parts of the rough manuscript. My thanks also to Tony Greco, Johannes Mohr, Raymond Dufresne, Kenneth Little, and Paul Roazen for their support and helpful comments, and to Maureen MacGrogan and the very capable staff at Routledge. I am indebted to Julian Patrick, Sophie Thomas, John Caruana, and Charles Dudas for their thoughtful and painstaking works of translation. Most of all it is my great privilege to acknowledge each of the contributors for their generos­ ity towards, patience with, and (compound) interest in this project. Without their participation this could not, echoing Freud, have become a valuable part of reality. Parts of this project developed while 1 was funded by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant, and a Queen Elizabeth 11 Ontario Scholarship. The following contributions first appeared in these journals: Paul Roazen (based on), “Nietzsche and Freud: Two Voices From the Underground,” The Psychohistory Review (Spring 1991): 327-49; Daniel Bougnoux, “Lacan oui, et après?” Revue Esprit (July 1993); Jacques Derrida, ‘“To Do Justice to Freud’: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 227-66; Rodolphe Gasché, “La sorcière méta psychologique,” diagraphe 4 (1974): 83-122. My thanks, finally, to Peter Swales for sending me a copy of the Freud postcard to Lacan (8.1.1933), and to Tom Roberts and The Sigmund Freud Copyrights for allowing its reproduction here: © 1984, A.W. Freud et al, by arrangement with Mark Paterson & Associates. —Todd Dufresne, editor This page intentionally left blank introduction beyond the french freud Todd Dufresne The “French Freud,” carefully erased in quotation marks, no longer belongs to France alone or to any one personality—assuming that it ever could have, or did. A term without referent, the “French Freud” has become a slippery piece of signification beyond the regulative fiction of circuitous return and reception. Consequently, despite its wide currency today, or perhaps because of it, it is difficult to demarcate where the “French Freud” begins and/or ends, or even to know what the phrase means anymore. Rigorously speaking, then, there can be no return to the “French Freud,” but only multiple re-tums on a diversified invest­ ment in thinking psychoanalysis differently. But however dramatic, necessary, clever, or banal these suggestions may be, we have not really dispensed with reading and writing about Jacques Lacan in relation to the “French Freud.” It is not simply that people continue to identify Lacan with or as the French Freud, having deemed scare quotes superfluous. It is rather that the wild transmission and reception of Lacan’s work, within France and around the world, has only helped ensure the continued significance of what passes as French psychoanalysis. For the spirit of both Freud and Lacan live on precisely to the extent that their work resists any final systematization or institutionalization. Similarly, the inevitable erasure of boundaries between the cultures of psychoanalysis, coupled with the so-called “death of psychoanalysis” in North America and elsewhere, has only enabled psychoanalysis to proliferate beyond the grip of any founding nation, school, or personality'. Returns of the “French Freud” was broadly conceived with this proliferation in mind and reflects a diversity of interests (or returns) that pass through the elusive theme of the “French Freud”; exported and commodified, today Lacan’s thought pervades the intellectual and psychoanalytic worlds. Yet it cannot be easily intro­ duced or thematized. To help situate the reader along this difficult and slippery ter­