Elisabeth Roudinesco
Encyclopedia
Élisabeth Roudinesco (born 10 September 1944 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

) is a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot. Her work has been translated into thirty languages.

Life

Born to half-Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 parents, she was the daughter of Jenny Weiss (whose sister was the feminist Louise Weiss
Louise Weiss
Louise Weiss was a French author, journalist, feminist and European politician.- Life :Louise Weiss came from a cosmopolitan family of Alsace. The ancestors of her Jewish mother, Jeanne Javal, originated from the small Alsatian town of Seppois-le-Bas...

) and Alexandru Rudinescu, of Romanian origin. Her parents were both physicians. She received her secondary education in Paris at Collège Sévigné
Collège Sévigné
The Collège Sévigné is a French non-denominational private school.It is ranked 2nd in the city and 19th in the country by a french weekly magazine....

. She studied Literature at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

, with a minor in Linguistics; her master degree was supervised by Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 with his wife Nancy Huston and their two children, writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory....

, and her doctoral thesis, entitled Inscription du désir et roman du sujet, by Jean Levaillant at the Université Paris VIII-Vincennes in 1975. She also took classes of Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau was a French Jesuit and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences.-Education:...

, Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...

 and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

 at the time of her master's degree. She next defended her "habilitation à diriger des recherches" (H.D.R – the French accreditation needed to supervise doctoral dissertations) in 1991 with Michelle Perrot as supervisor and Alain Corbin
Alain Corbin
Alain Corbin is a French historian, specialist of the 19th century in France.Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités...

, Dominique Lecourt
Dominique Lecourt
Dominique Lecourt is a French philosopher and editor born on 5 February 1944 in Paris. He is known in the anglophone world primarily for his work developing a materialist interpretation of the philosophy of science of Gaston Bachelard....

, Jean-Claude Passeron, Robert Castel
Robert Castel
Robert Castel is a French sociologist, currently a researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.-Work:...

, and Serge Leclaire
Serge Leclaire
Serge Leclaire was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Initially analyzed by Jacques Lacan, he 'became the first French "Lacanian".'.Subsequently he developed into 'one of the most respected and distinguished of all French analysts'.-Career:...

 as members of the examining committee. This work was published under the title Généalogies.

From 1969 to 1981, she was a member of the École Freudienne de Paris
École Freudienne de Paris
The École Freudienne de Paris was a French psychoanalytic professional body formed in 1964, of which Jacques Lacan was a founding member....

, founded by psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

. Meanwhile, she was also a member of the editorial board of Revue Poétique (1969–1979). She has written for French national newspapers, Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...

 (1986–1996), and then Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

 since 1996.

Academic position

  • Since her H.D.R. diploma in 1991, she supervised some PhD thesis in the graduate program Economies, espaces, sociétés, civilisation, pensée critique, politique et pratiques sociales at the University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot. Her graduate lectures on the history of psychoanalysis have been hosted by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
    École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
    The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...

    , the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
    École pratique des hautes études
    The École pratique des hautes études is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions....

    , the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
    École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
    The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts is the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France.The École des Beaux-arts is made up of a vast complex of buildings located at 14 rue Bonaparte, between the quai Malaquais and the rue Bonaparte, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Près,...

     and, since 2011, by the department of history of the ENS
    Ens
    Ens may refer to:*Ens , a village in the Dutch province of Flevoland*Ens, Hautes-Pyrénées, a town in France*Ens, Saskatchewan, a hamlet in CanadaENS may also refer to:*ENS Ltd, a London based PR agency that specializes in sport...

    .
  • Guest researcher at laboratoire ICT (Identités, Cultures, Territoires), a research team of University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot.
  • Part-time lecturer at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
    École pratique des hautes études
    The École pratique des hautes études is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions....

     (E.P.H.E.) from 2001 to 2007.
  • Part-time lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
    École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
    The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...

     (E.H.E.S.S.) from 1992 to 1996.
  • President of the Société Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychanalyse – S.I.H.P.P. (International Society of History of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis).
  • Member of the editorial advisory board of scientific journals "L'Homme" (EHESS Editions – 1997–2002), "History of psychiatry" (Sage Publications) since 2003 and "Cliniques Méditerranéenne" (Eres Edition) since 2000.
  • Member of the Société Française d'Histoire de la Médecine (French Society for the History of Medicine) since 1997.
  • Visiting Professor at Middlesex University
    Middlesex University
    Middlesex University is a university in north London, England. It is located in the historic county boundaries of Middlesex from which it takes its name. It is one of the post-1992 universities and is a member of Million+ working group...

     – London since 2006.
  • Contributor to French national newspapers Libération
    Libération
    Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...

     (1986–1996), then Le Monde
    Le Monde
    Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

     since 1996.

Methodology

In the 1970s, Elisabeth Roudinesco
Elisabeth Roudinesco
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...

's first works dealt with literary criticism, notably with Raymond Roussel
Raymond Roussel
Raymond Roussel was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouveau...

, Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...

, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

 and Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...

. At that time, her work concerned linking a singular trajectory and an author's work, without resorting to psycho-biography, in other words, the psychologization of literary work by the clinical study of its author. This approach allowed her to demonstrate that most of 20th century literature has been influenced by the history of Freudianism and pschological medicine based on the theory of degeneration.

From 1979, Elisabeth Roudinesco write a history of psychoanalysis in France. At that time, the main model was still the biography, because the archives and documents of the psychoanalytical movement were still in the hand of Freud's heirs.

Indeed, this model corresponded to the historiographical trend centered on the notion of the founding father figure; a trend which is at the core of any quest of origins. However, this model has gradually declined, as scholarly historiography emerged with such work as Henri Ellenberger
Henri Ellenberger
Henri F. Ellenberger was a Canadian-Swiss psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding historiographer of psychiatry....

's The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry, first published in 1970. Though this book had been known in English-speaking countries since that date, the book (published in French in 1974) remained largely unnoticed in France until Elisabeth Roudinesco
Elisabeth Roudinesco
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...

 republished it with a lengthy new preface in 1994. In his work, Ellenberger developed a conceptuality of freudianism founded on archivistics and reference to the concepts of “mental tools”, “long length” and “system of thought”. This last category proposed presenting doctrines in their own terms and structures. The study of the system of thought of dynamic psychiatry
Dynamic psychiatry
Dynamic psychiatry is that which is based on the study of emotional processes, their origins, and the mental mechanisms underlying them, rather than observable behavioral phenomena, in contrast with descriptive psychiatry which is based on the study of observable symptoms and behavioral phenomena...

, psychotherapies and psychological medicine no longer echoes back to a single founder, but to a plurality of singular itineraries, shattering the biographic model. From Ellenberger's thesis, Elisabeth Roudinesco
Elisabeth Roudinesco
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...

 retained several guiding principles, while adding methodology derived from the works of the French epistemological school: Georgues Canguilhem and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

. Thus, the study of system of thought becomes the form in which, at a given time, knowledge achieves independence, finding balance and entering into communication: a history of a man who thinks, systems which intertwine, but also a critical analysis of the concepts of consciousness and subject of knowledge.

Considering how psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 was established as a movement and system of thought, Elisabeth Roudinesco asserted that France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 was the only country where all the necessary conditions were gathered together, over a long period of time, to successfully establish Freudianism in scientific and cultural life. According to Elisabeth Roudinesco, this favorable situation dated back first to the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 of 1789 which provided a scientific and legal legitimacy to reason, heed/gaze over madness, giving birth to the institution of the asylum. Then, the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...

, which has precipitated the arrival of intellectuals' self-awareness as a class. Designating themselves as an 'avant-garde', they furnished fruitful and innovative ideas. Finally, the emergence of literary modernity with Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Lautréamont, who enunciate, in a new style of writing, the project of changing man through “I is another”.

In 1993, Elisabeth Roudinesco
Elisabeth Roudinesco
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...

 published a biography of Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

, an interpreter of the Freudianism that was born in the fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. From 1938, Lacan
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...

 felt preoccupied by the generalized decline of the patriarchy and tried, like Freud and the English school, to promote the father figure within Western society, under the form of a symbolic function. Roudinesco highlighted the fact that the genius of Lacan's work is the introduction of elements from German philosophy (e.g., Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger) within the Freudian doctrine – creating a phenomenon Freud would have never conceived himself, since he built his theory on a biological model (darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....

), by consciously refusing to consider and include any philosophical discourses, contemporary or ancient, in his thought process.

Physician and philosopher Raymond Tallis
Raymond Tallis
Raymond Tallis F.Med.Sci., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.A. is a British philosopher, humanist, poet, novelist, cultural critic and retired medical doctor.-Medical career:...

 wrote a scathing review of the first English language translation of Roudinesco's biography, stating "The innocence with which Roudinesco reports all kinds of clinical cock-ups [in Lacan's medical career] makes this book a particularly disturbing read for a medic."

The study of the melancholic Théroigne de Mericourt (1989), early feminist and famous case of the annals of French alienism – she has been 'gazed' by Etienne Esquirol in La Salpêtrière – helped Roudinesco to understand how important the paradigm of the French Revolution is in the French situation of Freudianism. Furthermore, it became clear for Roudinesco that it was more than ever necessary to include the analysis of patients into the analysis of doctrines as a major constituting element of the discourses of psychopathology
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...

.

Roudinesco also shows that invariant conditions are required to introduce Freudian ideas and establish psychoanalytical movement in a given space. First, a psychiatric knowledge must have been previously constituted, namely a gaze over madness able to conceptualize the notion of mental illness to the detriment of explanation such as divine possession. Secondly, the existence of a State of right capable of guaranteeing the free practice of a transmission like the transferential kind.

Whenever one or both of theses elements are lacking it explains why the establishment of Freudianism has not been possible (era of the world influenced by Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 or whom the organization is still tribal) or its disappearance ( under totalitarian regime, nazism and communism). She also notices that military dictatorship didn't refrain the expansion of psychoanalysis in South American (notably Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

). Roudinesco assesses that caudillo
Caudillo
Caudillo is a Spanish word for "leader" and usually describes a political-military leader at the head of an authoritarian power. The term translates into English as leader or chief, or more pejoratively as warlord, dictator or strongman. Caudillo was the term used to refer to the charismatic...

 regimes didn't try to eradicate psychoanalysis as “jewish science” like did nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 in the years 1933–1944 nor as a “bourgeois science” like did communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 over the period 1945–1989.

Political standing

Since 1997, She has expressed political standing in various public debates. She is in favour of homosexuals' right to adopt children and against affirmative action. Once more, She stands in debates such as laicity, cloning, genetics, innate and acquired. She fiercely criticized INSERM's reports of experts over psychotherapies. In that sense, she is one of the very first signer of Pas de Zéro de Conduite's petition against systematic detection of delinquency of children under three years of age, as advocated by another INSERM's reports.

See also

  • Javal family
    Javal family
    The Javal family originated in Alsace. They benefited from Napoleon I's policy of openness toward Jews, and in the nineteenth century experienced a remarkable ascent, with family members becoming prominent bankers, industrialists, physicians, public officials and artists...

  • Henri Ellenberger
    Henri Ellenberger
    Henri F. Ellenberger was a Canadian-Swiss psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding historiographer of psychiatry....

  • Paul Roazen
    Paul Roazen
    Paul Roazen was a political scientist who became a preeminent historian of psychoanalysis.Roazen studied at Harvard University and in Chicago and Oxford. Later he returned to Harvard. The subject of his dissertation was Freud's political thinking...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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