L'INCONSCIENT

The periodical, L'Inconscient, was founded by Piera Aulagnier-Spairani, who was the editor-in-chief, and Jean Clavreul and Conrad Stein. With the help of Renée Andrau and Lucio Covello as editorial secretaries, the first issue, published by Presses Universitaires de France, appeared in January-March 1967. At the time the psychoanalytic movement in France had been wracked by divisions and internal dissension. The Société Française de Psychanalyse (French Psychoanalytic Society) had been dissolved and rival institutions created. These included the Association Psychanalytique de France (French Psychoanalytic Association), which in 1965 became part of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and theÉcole Freudienne de Paris (Freudian School of Paris), directed by Jacques Lacan. Two students of Lacan's organization worked with a member of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society), Conrad Stein, to create a review that was open to the opposing points of view that were tearing the French psychoanalytic movement apart. It was one of the attempts by psychoanalysts of the 1950s to establish connections with organizations other than the official psychoanalytic bodies, which pretended to ignore one another when they were not actively jockeying for position.

Appropriately, the first issue was devoted to the topic of "transgression," and included essays by Conrad Stein, Serge Leclaire, Michel Neyraut, Guy Rosolato, and Piera Aulagnier. Other issues followed; the issue devoted to perversion contained contributions from Jean Clavreul, André Green, Jean-Paul Valabrega, and Georges Daumézon. Daumézon represented the symbolic link that united these disparate personalities: The Sainte-Anne Hospital, where many of these young psychoanalysts worked. (Most were between thirty and forty years of age at the time.)

Over the course of eight issues, there were contributions from a wide range of practitioners, including Serge Viderman, Lucien Israël, Irène Roublef, Christian David, Michel de M'Uzan, Francis Pasche, François Roustang, Jean-Luc Donnet, François Perrier, Jean Gillibert, Joyce McDougall, Dominique Geachan, Claude Robant, Robert Barande, and Cornélius Costoriadis. Unfortunately, dissension within the psychoanalytic community led to the cessation of publication after two years. The final issue, of October 1968, was devoted to the potentially explosive topic of psychoanalytic training. The founders argued among themselves, a reflection of the dissension within the Lacanian movement that had originated with Lacan's statements concerning "la passe " in October of the previous year. A notice indicated that "the editors have been unable to agree on the direction most suitable for a review of psychoanalysis or on the role they felt it should play."

Five months later Piera Aulagnier founded the Quatrième Group, Organisation Psychanalytique de Langue Française (Fourth Group: French Language Psychoanalytic Organization) with François Perrier and Jean-Paul Valabrega, and the review Topique. That same year, 1969, Conrad Stein foundedÉtudes freudiennes, which also published points of view that differed from the French psychoanalytic mainstream. It was several years, however, before the psychoanalytic ecumenicalism of L'Inconscient was repeated in France.

Alain de Mijolla

See also: Études freudiennes ; France; Topique .