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The “Here and Now” of French Psychoanalysis: Conversations with Contemporary Psychoanalysts

Author(s) : Rachel Boué-Widawsky

Reviews and Endorsements

In this volume we get to hear the response of a diverse group of French and francophone psychoanalysts to current societal issues; a very interesting addition to this body of work.
Dana Birksted-Breen L.ès L. PhD; Distinguished Fellow and Training Psychoanalyst of the BPAS

The depth and complexity of contemporary French psychoanalytic thinking has often presented challenges to anglophone readers, because of insufficient translation and the often times demanding poetics of the French intellectual literary style. Here is an accessible, thought provoking and deeply personal window into the hearts and minds of leading figures in contemporary French analysis, one that will offer readers of all levels of experience an invaluable treasure chest of personal, historical, and clinical psychoanalytic resources that cannot help but entice, engage and expand one’s thinking and understanding about oneself and one’s clinical practice. To read this book is to encounter, challenge and enlarge one’s assumptions and understandings about one’s knowledge of psychoanalysis in the most imaginative and creative ways possible. It is a vital experience that should not be missed and for which readers will long be grateful.
Howard B. Levine, Training-Analyst, Member of PINE, NYU Post-Doc, author, Affect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the Cry; editor, The Freudian Matrix of André Green: Towards a Psychoanalysis for the Twenty-First Century and On The Destruction and Death Drives by André Green

The "Here and Now" of French Psychoanalysis, Conversations with Contemporary French Psychoanalysts is an exciting book, a compilation of conversations with contemporary French psychoanalysts which brings to life the central themes and controversies in French psychoanalysis today. Dr. Boué-Widawsky’s thoughtful interviews make French psychoanalysis accessible to the Anglophone reader. Although it would be possible to use the book as a reference to learn about a specific author, my sense is that readers will be stimulated, as I was, to read it through and to engage with the lively and erudite conversations that it presents. The book is a pleasure to read as well as a useful introduction to French psychoanalysis.
Lucy LaFarge, M.D.; Editor-in-Chief, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Training Analyst at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College

Separated more by failures of translation than differences in language per se, French and Anglo-American psychoanalytic histories have evolved relatively independent of each other. Rachel Boué-Widawsky’s volume bridges this divide through a series of structured interviews with leading contemporary French psychoanalysts; a method that reveals the diversity of each personal journey as well as the foci and themes that distinguish French psychoanalysis as a distinct theoretical and clinical perspective. Her excellent introduction not only sets the scene for the interviews that follow but also provides a valuable resource for scholars and clinicians who wish to contrast, compare, and perhaps incorporate French psychoanalytic thinking into their own work.
Bonnie E. Litowitz, PhD; Faculty, Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute; JAPA Editor-in-Chief, Emerita; co-editor (with G. Gabbard and P. Williams), The Textbook of Psychoanalysis