A Skin for Thought: Interviews with Gilbert Tarrab on Psychology and Psychoanalysis

A French analyst discusses the interface between psychoanalysis and psychology. A Skin for Thought takes the form of ten transcribed discussions between Didier Anzieu and Gilbert Tarrab, recorded in Montreal during Anzieu's lecture tour there. A practitioner and theoretician of individual and group analysis, Anzieu speaks frankly of the origins and development of his vocation, the stages of his training, and the evolution of his research, and explains the principal ideas he has developed: group illusion; the psychic tasks of creativity, and 'the Skin Ego'.

In answer to Gilbert Tarrab's probing questions, Didier Anzieu recalls the distinctive atmosphere of his childhood, a first analysis with Lacan, the events of May 1968 at Nanterre, his literary ambitions, and his enthusiasm for psychodrama. By turns, the discussion focuses on the concept of the body, the group and the institution, and, from a psychological viewpoint, reflects critically upon the fascination of idealizes and the struggle for power, the structure and dynamics if the social unconscious, the decline of the University, and the ecological significance of the psychoanalytic situation.