Smirnoff, Victor Nikolaïevitch (1919-1995)

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SMIRNOFF, VICTOR NIKOLAÏEVITCH (1919-1995)

The French psychoanalyst and neuropsychiatrist Victor Smirnoff was born on November 27, 1919, in Petrograd and died in Paris on November 5, 1995.

The child of doctors belonging to the social-democratic intelligentsia, he emigrated with his parents in 1921 after the Bolsheviks came to power. He spent some early years in Berlin before moving to Paris in 1929. After medical training, he worked as a psychiatrist under Georges Heuyer. In 1950, a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation took him to the United States on a fellowship in child psychiatry. There he came into contact with the pioneers of the Child Guidance movement, while his cultural interests and love of books led him into artistic and literary avant-garde circles.

Back in Paris in 1954, he undertook an analysis with Jacques Lacan at the suggestion of Wladimir Granoff. Much involved in the internal debates of the Société Française de Psychanalyse leading up to the split of 1963, Smirnoff was one of those, when that split occurred, who opted for rejoining the International Psychoanalytical Association and distanced themselves from Lacan's practical procedures while acknowledging the value of his teaching.

As a child psychoanalyst, Smirnoff took part in the organization of teaching at La Salpêtrière with Jean-Louis Lang and Daniel Widlöcher, and founded the psychotherapy clinic of the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, known as "La Rue Tiphaine," where the psychoanalytical approach predominated. He was very active in the founding and running of the Association Psychanalytique de France (APF), contributing most importantly to training issues through his writings and his many control analyses. He was the association's president in 1975 and again in 1984. He took part in numerous conferences and built up the association's external relationships as much in France (notably with the Quatrième Group) as abroad. Smirnoff's friendship with Masud Khan in London and his desire for cultural expansion led to his translation into French of several essential texts, including Winnicott's "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena" (1953) and Klein's Envy and Gratitude (1955).

Smirnoff's book The Scope of Child Analysis, first published in 1966, has been widely translated and frequently reprinted, and in 1992 it was completely revised. It is a basic work of reference in its field.

A member of the editorial board of the Nouvelle Revue de psychanalyse, Smirnoff also contributed many articles to other journals, among them Topique, L 'Esprit du Temps, and L 'Inactuel. The titles of his books attest to his eclecticism: Et Guérir de plaisir, De Vienneà Paris, Une Ténébreuse Affaire, and Les Limbes de la répression (written in collaboration with Marie-Claude Fusco, his partner of many years).

Victor Smirnoff contributed broadly to the development of the psychoanalysis of adults as well as that of children, and he never cordoned child analysis off, preferring to integrate it into an overall theoretical perspective.

He liked to refer to himself as ein analytischer Wandersmann, an analytic journeyman, and his personal itinerary indeed enabled him to maintain a cosmopolitan cultural openness and a wide acquaintanceship with a variety of analytical tendencies without wavering in his commitment to the APF and his position within it.

The legacy of Victor Smirnoff is that of a humanist for whom psychoanalysis was a true passion, a way of thinking, and indeed a way of living.

HÉlÈne Trivouss-WidlÖcher

See also: Association Psychanalytique de France; Documents et Débats ; France; Nouvelle Revue de psychanalyse ; Société française de psychanalyse.