Daniel Lagache

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Daniel Lagache was a French physician, psychoanalyst, and professor at the Sorbonne. He was born on December 3, 1903, in Paris, where he died on December 3, 1972.'[1]

He was one of the leading figures in twentieth century French psychoanalysis.

Career

Daniel Lagache began higher education at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1924. Becoming interested in psychopathology under the influence of Georges Dumas, he began to study medicine - alongside such figures as Raymond Aron, Paul Nizan, and Jean-Paul Sartre - as well as psychiatry. By 1937 he had become chief physician in the clinic directed by Henri Claude. Appointed lecturer in psychology at the University of Strasbourg in 1937, he succeeded to the chair of psychology at the Sorbonne in 1947, before obtaining the chair of psychopathology in 1955.

After a training analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein in the thirties, Lagache focused his research interests on Freudian psychoanalysis: his 'perfect understanding of German allowed him to study Freud's works in the original as well as to read the German phenomenologists and psychopathologists. In 1937 his communication, "Deuil, mélancolie, manie" (Mourning, melancholia and mania) brought him full membership in the SPP'[2] - the Paris psychoanalytical society.

Psychoanalytic politics

After the war, Lagache's views on training came into increasing conflict with those of the society's establishment: he stood for an 'academic liberalism based on the merging of psychology and psychoanalysis', as opposed to 'the authoritarianism of the medical profession'[3] represented by Sacha Nacht. In 1953, Lagache led a break-away from the SPP. 'Lagache was of the opinion that, rather than continue his struggle with Nacht, who now had control over the training and approval processes, he would do better to create a new association, within which he could move freely. He had been preparing his move for some time'.[4] Francoise 'Dolto...followed Daniel Lagache as he created the Societe Francaise de Psychanalyse (French Society for Psychoanalysis, or SFP)',[5] - as too did Jacques Lacan (despite earlier disputes between the two men).

Lacan and Lagache thereafter worked together side by side in the new Society during the fifties, Lagache predominantly as supervisor, Lacan as training analyst. Lacan's fulsome tribute in Ecrits belongs to this era: 'It is to the work of my colleague Daniel Lagache that we must turn for a true account of the work which...has been devoted to the transference...introducing into the function of the phenomenon structural distinctions that are essential for its critique. One has only to recall the very relevant alternative that he presents, as to its ultimate nature, between the need for repetition and the repetition of need'.[6] In a more critical vein, Lacan also took up Lagache's work on the ego ideal - 'which he expressed in the form of a theory at the 1958 Royaumont colloquium on personality',[7] - as a springboard for his own 'article Remarque sur le rapport de Daniel Lagache, concerning the ideal ego and the ego ideal'.[8]

However the major problem that had faced the new Society from the start was that of obtaining recognition from the International Psychoanalytical Association; and here Lacan increasingly appeared as the main obstacle to success. Both his theoretical stance, and his short sessions, stood ever more obviously in the way. While both men had been analysed by Loewenstein, Lacan had reacted violently against his ego psychology, whereas 'if you read Lagache there is a Hartmannian flavour in it'; so that for the IPA the problem became 'how to accept Lagache, while leaving Lacan out'.[9]

The 'rift between Lacan and Lagache also grew decisive', and the pair's theoretical divergences became overt with Lacan's 1961 publication of 'a long theoretical essay criticising Daniel Lagache...[which] attacks the latter's "personalism" and fusion of psychology and psychoanalysis'.[10]

The eventual result was the dissolution of the SFP in 1964, and the division of its assets and membership between two new organizations. Lagache became the first president of the new Association Psychanalytique de France (APF), an institution that was swiftly 'recognized in 1965 by the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA).[11]

Writings

In his prewar work on mourning, 'Lagache considers mourning as a social ritual', its aim '"the accomplishment of a split between the living and the dead'[12] - something requiring aggression to be carried through. 'Lagache identifies three sources of aggression in mourning', culminating in 'the aggression required "to destroy the loved object", which is the work of mourning'.[13] In his 'later paper, "Pathological Mourning" (1956), Lagache revisits the question of excessive (manic or masochistic) mourning', stressing how here especially '"consciousness is thus torn between an obligation to the dead that stipulates dying and the wish to live"'.[14] It was then 'Lagache...[who] did the most re-open the question of mourning in its entirety'.[15]

His 1951-2 Report on Transference emphasized how 'everything is "transference", everywhere and always - as Lagache reminds us'.[16] In it, 'supported by structuralist and gestaltist concepts, Lagache works with the supposition that the mind operates in search of certain integrations...In transferential repetition there is always a desire to complete something that had remained incomplete'.[17] Thus 'Lagache is decidedly in favour of Freud's earlier thesis (the earlier and final one)...of the repetition of the need',[18] rather than the "need for repetition" stressed in between by the death drive.

On jealousy Lagache singled out the desire 'to possess the object totally and exclusively; the "loved object is seen as a thing, not as an independent consciousness: the possessive lover refuses to acknowledge the alterity of the Other"'.[19]

In his teaching, Lagache addresses various areas of psychology, seeking constantly to draw them into a conscious synthesis, in the spirit of his remarkable inaugural lecture on "The Unity of Psychology: experimental psychology and clinical psychology"(1949). But his work is essentially psychopathological, though also inspired by phenomenology. His little book The Psychoanalysis (1955) is "a model in terms of accuracy and an example of openness to diversity of fields of application" (Didier Anzieu).

Numerous other articles and communications testify to his clinical experience and his extensive research in psychoanalysis. Founder and director of a series called "Library of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology", Daniel Lagache was also the project leader of the Dictionary of Psychoanalysis(1967), written under his direction by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. He sought to introduce Freudian concepts into social psychology (for which he established a laboratory at the Sorbonne); and in Criminology, he devoted several studies to criminogenesis.

Criticism

Critics would argue that Lagache's attempt at the 'integration of Freudianism into Janetism'[20] through his emphasis on clinical psychology was a dead end; that, as Lacan put it, 'that extraordinary lateral transference, by which the categories of a psychology that re-invigorates its menial tasks with social exploitation acquire a new strength in psychoanalysis', was foredoomed - 'I regard the fate of psychology as signed and sealed';[21] and that 'Lagache gradually lost his unitary battle the more famous he became'.[22]

See also

Jean Laplanche

Psychoanalytic theory

References

  1. ↑ Eva Rosenblum, "Lagache, Daniel (1903-1972)"
  2. ↑ Rosenblum
  3. ↑ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (Oxford 1997) p. 196 and p. 201
  4. ↑ Michael Radich, Being Irrational (2004) p. 32
  5. ↑ L. D. Kirtzam et al, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought (2007) p. 507
  6. ↑ Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London 1997) p. 241
  7. ↑ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (Oxford 1997) p. 284
  8. ↑ Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (Penguin 1994) p. 144
  9. ↑ Andre Green in Gregorio Kohon, The Dead Mother (1993) p. 21
  10. ↑ Jean-Michel Rabate, The Cambridge Companion to Lacan (2003) p. 134 and p. 13
  11. ↑ Rosenblum
  12. ↑ M. Nixon/L. Bourgeois, Fantastic Reality (2005) p. 159
  13. ↑ Nixon, p. 160
  14. ↑ Nixon, p. 161
  15. ↑ Jean Laplanche, Essays on Otherness (1999) p. 254
  16. ↑ Laplanche, p. 225
  17. ↑ R. Horatio Etchegoyen, The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique (London 2005) p. 94
  18. ↑ Etchegoyen, p. 116
  19. ↑ Elizabeth Fallaize, Simone de Beauvoir (1998) p. 178
  20. ↑ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co (London 1990) p. 219
  21. ↑ Lacan, Ecrits p. 297
  22. ↑ Roudinesco, Co p. 221

Further reading

Daniel Lagache, The Works of Daniel Lagache: Selected Papers, 1938-1964 (1993)

Alain de Mijolla, Freud and France, 1885-1945 (2010)

External links

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