LAURENT-LUCAS-CHAMPIONNIÈREMAUGÉ, ODETTE (1892-1964)

Odette Laurent-Lucas-Championnière-Maugé, French physician and psychoanalyst, was born in Rosny-sous-Bois on October 18, 1892, and died in PrépatourVendôme in the Loir-et-Cher department of France on October 21, 1964.

She worked in the Bretonneau hospital with Fran-çoise Marette (later Dolto). In their Paris apartment she and her husband, Henri Codet, often hosted meetings of a group for the study of the evolution of psychiatry. Marie Bonaparte analyzed her. She was appointed a contributing member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris (Paris analytic Society) on November 20, 1934, at the same time as Jacques Lacan and became a full member on June 18, 1935. During the 1930s she attended the meetings of the Soroptimist, the French branch of a U.S. union for women of all occupations. Following the death of her first husband in an automobile accident in 1939, she married the architect Laurent Lucas-Championnière.

Her article "À propos de trois cas d'anorexie mentale" (On three cases of anorexia nervosa), published in 1939 under the name of Odette Codet and republished in 1948, presents the cases of three girls between the ages of three and fifteen. In it she highlighted the fact that conflicts increase in complexity with the age of the subject and stressed that parental attitudes have a primordial role in the genesis and treatment of such conflicts "to such a degree that we sometimes wonder . . . whether the real solution might not be to psycho-analyze the parents."

In June 1953, during the conflict in the Paris Psychoanalytic Society against the "liberals" and Sacha Nacht's group, Odette, backed by Marie Bonaparte, proposed the following motion: "Having remarked its profound disagreement with its president, Jacques Lacan, as noted in the session of June 2, the general assembly of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society organized in administrative session cannot testify to its faith in him and asks its vice-president to assume the role of president until the election of leaders in accordance with the statutes." The adoption of this motion on June 16 signaled a split: Lacan resigned, and Daniel Lagache took over as president but later resigned from the Paris Psychoanalytic Society to create the French Psychoanalytic Society.

While president of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society in 1959, she began to suffer from arterial illness and had to retire. She became an honorary member in 1963.

Jean-Pierre Bourgeron

See also: France.

Bibliography

Codet, Odette. (1939).À propos de trois cas d'anorexie mentale. Revue française de psychanalyse, 11 (2), 253-272. (Republished: (1948). Revue française de psychanalyse, 12 (1), 81-100.)