Some Motifs in Psychoanalysis on the Work of Laurence Kahn

A conference was held on the work of Laurence Kahn, at Cerisy-la-Salle from July 13 to 20, 2018, titled La psychanalyse: anatomie de sa modernité. It was organized by Françoise Neau, Catherine Matha and Odile Bombarde, and its proceedings have recently been published[1]. Speakers at this conference included anthropologists, psychoanalysts and philosophers who retraced the intellectual and clinical trajectory of Laurence Kahn which include: different perspectives on myths[2], psychoanalysis with children[3], the analytic method of listening[4], sex and gender[5], the use of language[6]  and the postwar and postmodern development of psychoanalysis[7].

It is particularly relevant to speak about this book in conjunction with the latest issue of Psychoanalysis.Today which is devoted to contemporary politics. Indeed, like Laurence Kahn affirmed in 2004, in an interview with Michel Enaudeau[8], anthropology, as a way of reading Freud's texts, was closely articulated with the question of politics. An historian and scholar of Greek culture before becoming a psychoanalyst, she combines her knowledge of Greek myths and ancient tragedy with the anthropological texts of Freud to enrich her clinical and theoretical reflection.

In this brief note, it seems appropriate, a century after the publication of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, to evoke a common thread of this book: the irreversible submission of humanity to the compulsion to repeat and to the conflict between the opposing forces of Eros and Thanatos.

Laurence Kahn reflects on that which

within each individual, regardless of this so-called progress of civilization, very regularly instills anew an absolute hatred of the other, as an enemy, as different, as stranger to oneself. Yet he [Freud] does not seek the origin of barbarism – since that itself is the problem – in the historical transformations of societies, he searches it within the configuration of each individual. Ultimately, Freud thought that the origin of barbarism lies in a primary organization of the individual[9].

This question has been left aside by contemporary psychoanalysis which has ‘not taken into account the clinical and theoretical disorientation, inflicted by the outbreak of the Nazi movement’[10]. 

Instead of thinking about the reasons why the masses gathered around a Führer, contemporary psychoanalysis has focused instead on the empathetic listening of the trauma and the pathologies of the victims of the Shoah. What place should be given to affects related to the experience of Auschwitz?

For Laurence Kahn, affect is indicated by ‘the action of form’[11]. 

Affect is in the details since its mobility is the sign of its ability to unite with one representation or another, in total indifference to the representation in question. Affect is only a legitimate guide if it gives access to the repressed representation. In the patient’s voice and speech, the analyst will focus on what comes out of the emotional and bodily dimension and which escapes meaning.[12]