ALLENDY-NEL-DUMOUCHEL, YVONNE (1890-1935)

A French writer and art critic (under the pseudonym of Jacques Poisson), Yvonne Allendy-Nel-Dumouchel was born in Paris on September 3, 1890, and died there on August 23, 1935.

Alice Yvonne Nel-Dumouchel (she later gave up the name Alice) married René Allendy, homeopathic doctor and future founding member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, on November 19, 1912. In 1922, together with her husband, she created the Groupe d'études philosophiques et scientifiques pour l'examen des idées nouvelles, at the Sorbonne.

She was coauthor with him of Capitalisme et Sexualité (Capitalism and sexuality; 1931), a work whose subject matter touched upon communism and feminism. Claiming that life is an ongoing, and one-way, adaptation guided by our instincts, the authors affirm that capitalism intensifies the conflicts between the instincts of possession and those leading to procreation, that economic concerns increase in importance and are substituted, in the relations between the sexes, for values of a sentimental nature. "Woman experiences economic servitude combined with sexual dependence, her illusory emancipation is added to her responsibilities." Faced with these difficulties, they stipulate a kind of economic regulatory system, national and international, culminating in the abolition of capitalism. As far as the modern family is concerned, they want to see the State substituted for the father as the economic provider. Their analysis cites both Freud and Engels.

Under the pseudonym of Jacques Poisson, Yvonne Allendy published a number of articles on the relationship between art and psychoanalysis. Speaking of the cinema, she affirmed that her subject must include the new field then of concern to researchers: the unconscious psychic apparatus, which dominates drama. Allendy claimed that only the cinema is capable of clearly reproducing the thought-image in all its dizzying rapidity.

In "Littérature moderne et psychanalyse" (April 1923), she makes use of Freud's methods to clarify literature, painting, and especially the work of the avant-garde. Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, Philippe Soupault, and Blaise Cendrars were all examined for their Freudian symbolism. She suggested that there would be "more to gain in expanding our knowledge of human nature" if psychoanalysts were to study Dadaist texts "than there would be in having professors of literature explain classical texts."

She died in 1935 and her sister Colette became René Allendy's companion. Colette ran a gallery of modern art after the Second World War.

Jean-Pierre Bourgeron

See also: Allendy, René Félix Eugène; Cinema and psychoanalysis; Visual arts and psychoanalysis.

Bibliography

Allendy, René and Yvonne. (1931). Capitalisme et sexualité. Paris: Denoël & Steele.

Poisson, Jacques. (1921, April). Vers une nouvelle unité plastique. La Vie des lettres et des arts, IV, 445-448.

——. (1923, April). Littérature moderne et psychanalyse. La Vie des lettres et des arts, XIV, 71-74.

——. (1925). Cinéma et psychanalyse. Les cahiers du mois, 16-17, 175-176.