This is JE’s literal translation of ‘Intervention au 1re Congrès mondial de psychiatrie, Grand amphithéâtre de la Sorbonne’

Delivered on 26th September 1950 in the Grand Amphitheatre, Sorbonne University, Paris, during the plenary session “Evolution and present tendencies of psychoanalysis”

Translated by Elsa Koc, Edited by Anthony Chadwick

Published at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan/186. AUTRES ÉCRITS: (Intervention au 1er congrès mondial de psychiatrie) with an introduction describing its context, (Henri Ey was one of the organisers).

Originally published in Autres écrits pages 127‐130 : Information and notes see Autres Ecrits : 2001 at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (20010101 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

References

-Thomas de Quincey’s warning concerning assassination, namely that it leads to theft, then to lies, and soon to procrastination

-The Child’s Conception of the World, 1928, [La Représentation du monde chez l’enfant (1926, orig. pub. as an article, 1925)], Jean Piaget

-The evolution and present trends of psychoanalysis : September 1950 : Franz Alexander, Acta Psychologica, Volume 7, 1950, Pages 126-132

-Chapter 7 of The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Les structures élémentaires de la Parenté, 1949) Claude Lévi‐Strauss

– … let it be in the notion of phoneme in linguistics—promoted by Mr. Roman Jakobson –since language determines psychology more than psychology explains language.

– Mrs. Melanie Klein, by proceeding the infant just after the appearance of the language, to a realincantation of the experience of the infans stage, raised objections which have nothing less to do than with the eternal problem of the essence of the unnamed.

-We evoke her work here not only because Miss Anna Freud—having shown herself quite opposed to that sort of transgression which founds it—is the only one to have mentioned it here, …

– … stop supporting it in its Socratic vigour: that is to say, to forget that truth is a movement of discourse that can validly enlighten the confusion of a past …

– … we will be delighted that Mr. Levine learns how even some people in America consider him like us to be threatened. See Richard Klein’s footnote at www.Freud2Lacan.com

Introduction from www.Freud2Lacan.com quoting Elizabeth Roudinesco

“In 1947, Henri Ey proposed the creation of an international association charged with periodically organizing world congresses of psychiatry. Three years later, in the fall of 1950 [September 18‐27], the first congress assembled in Paris with representatives of some ten countries and about forty societies. There were more than 1,500 participants. All the leading names of the French movement figured among the speakers, from the first to the third generation: Marie Bonaparte, Adrien Borel, René Laforge, Louis Angelo Hesnard, Blanche Reverchon‐Jouve, Jacques Lacan, Sacha Nacht, Daniel Lagache, Franços Dolto, Marc Schlumberger, Juliette Bountiner, Pierre Mile, André Berge, Maurice Bouvet, and finally René Diatkine, Francis Pasche, Serge Lebovici, Georges Favez, Robert Pujol, Jenny Roudinesco, and Serge Leclaire.” Apparently even Anna Freud and Melanie Klein were in attendance.

In the interest of representing recent trends in psychoanalysis, Henry Ey invited Franz Alexander, president of the American Psychiatric Association, to open the proceedings. Alexander presented in details the hypotheses and methods of the Chicago school. Against him, Raymond de Saussure defended a rather curious notion of “prelogical mentality.” Francis Pasche ridiculed Saussure’s presentation and stated that the notion of prelogical thought had been abandoned by Lévy‐Bruhl and denounced Saussure’s amalgamation of Piaget’s theses with Freud. Daniel Lagache in turn thanked Alexander for underscoring at the outset that the therapeutic model from Chicago was more strategic than tactical and that “such therapy commits its practitioners to acting out and almost to psychodrama.” Whereupon Lagache defended the perspective of a merger between psychology and psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan intervened in turn. He reproached Saussure for his lack of a sense of humour, his outmoded etiological schemes, and his blunders concerning the amalgamation of Freud and Piaget. Lacan then attacked ego psychology and designated the ego as the “syndic of the most mobile functions through which man adapts to reality.” Following which he showed that Alexander’s conception of sexuality reversed Freud’s doctrine by turning the sexual function into an ”itch”. Lacan then reproached the therapists of the New World with reducing man to a mechanical animal.”

For more detailed information on this congress, see Elisabeth Roudinesco’s Jacques Lacan and Co. pages 173‐176 from which Richard Klein has just quoted and summarised the context of Lacan’s presentation.

Cited by Jacques Lacan

p5 of Elsa Koc in Seminar XI : 13th May 1964 : p174 of Alan Sheridan’s translation. Here is the quote:

When I read in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly an article like the one by Mr Edward Glover, entitled Freudian or Neo-Freudian, directed entirely against the constructions of Mr Alexander, I sense a sordid smell of stuffiness, at the sight of a construction like that of Mr Alexander being counter-attacked in the name of obsolete criteria. Good Heavens, I did not hesitate to attack it myself in the most categorical way fourteen years ago, at the 1950 Congress of Psychiatry, but, it is the construction of a man of great talent and when I see at what level this construction is discussed, I can pay myself the complement that through all the misadventures that my discourse encounters, here and certainly elsewhere, one can say that this discourse provides an obstacle to the experience of analysis being served up to you in a completely cretinous way.

At this point, I will resume my discourse …

See Seminar XI The Four Fundamental Concepts (1963-1964) : from 15th January 1964 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640115 or 19640513 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

The evolution and present trends of psychoanalysis : September 1950 :Franz Alexander, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Alexander or Index of Authors’ texts). This article is based on a report given at the Congress International de Psychiatrie, Paris, September, 1950, under the same title.

The Glover paper : Freudian or Neofreudian? : 1964 : Edward Glover, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Glover or Index of Authors)