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Introduction to the oedipe website
A little over a century ago, a young Jewish doctor, intelligent, ambitious, and not very rich, raised some questions, answers to which were going to have many effects on his contemporaries. His first goal was to earn a living, to open a private practice and to find patients in order to finally get married. Like any young man versed in research, he dreamed of glory and great discoveries. His work in neurobiology, both interesting and innovative, had not given him as many opportunities as he had hoped for. The theory of the relationship between anatomy and the clinical features of his patients' disease, which had nourished his research, conflicted with the questions raised by his patients for whom this correspondence did not exist.
In France two "schools" questioned this epistemological difficulty, in particular using hypnosis. The school of Nancy dared to question hypnotists who weren't doctors. In Paris, Professor Jean-Marie Charcot, whose fame relied on several significant discoveries in neurology, was interested in the signs displayed by some patients hospitalized in La Salpêtrière who were declared "hysterical". These patients presented symptoms -in particular paralyses- that did not correspond to what was known in anatomy and physiology. They were living again, under hypnosis, scenes with sexual contents. Freud leapt from the "arm" described in anatomical words, to the "arm" as an imaginary representation explained through speech. Without giving up the question of the anatomo-clinic correspondence, he ventures on another path, that of words which are not only to be listened to but also heard. Consciously or not, Freud also seeks to know himself and to confront himself with the enigmas of his own history. This leap will take its full meaning in letters and meetings with another Jewish doctor, his friend Wilhem Fliess; and later when he will undertake the analysis of his own dreams. In order to listen to patients speak throughout the day, it was undoubtedly useful for the comfort of the two protagonists to invent a device. Freud could not bear the gaze of his patients during the long hours of talks he had with them. By making them lay on a couch while staying behind them, he favored listening over gazing; he invented a device consistent with his method. He stated the fundamental rule, inviting his patients to say what comes to their mind.
Very quickly he ran up against a certain number of questions:
The reality of the reported facts. In the accounts he was hearing, the problem was the veracity and consequences of the sexual seduction conducted, according to his patients, in their early childhood by an adult, often a close family member and particularly the father. Freud then makes a series of progressions analyzing the question of this traumatism, leading to the theory of phantasm suggesting the importance of the subject's desire in the memory of his/her childhood history.
The tie between the analyst and the patient established during the cure. He names this link 'transfer', specifying that the transfer must be related to outdated childhood images and must be interpreted using the information obtained during the cure.
The resistance and censorship. The interpretation given to the patient does not immediately lead to its acceptance. The patient holds to his/her symptoms, defends them to some extent and painfully gives them up.
Freud built throughout his life and work: A method to explore the psychism with which he designed a new theory of the psychical apparatus as well as a method, which is proven to have therapeutic effects on the patients who let themselves experience it. After Freud, many psychoanalysts contributed to refined, modified, and broadened the paths explored by him, whether it was about group theory, pedagogy, anthropology, etc. The psychoanalytical field did not cease to include new subjects: children, infants, psychosomatics, etc. Men and women around the whole world have started to practice psychoanalysis, asking the question of who can call himself/herself a psychoanalyst? Is it only adhesion to a theory that qualifies the psychoanalyst? Initially, two principles were retained: The psychoanalyst must have undertaken psychoanalysis and have tested its effects on himself/herself, in particular regarding transfer and resistance. He/She must have received further training and, during a certain number of years, he must have been able to explain his/her difficulties to one or more analysts more experienced than him/her. The 'analytical community' gradually built itself from local associations gathered at an international level, training institutes, national and international publications, libraries, and now internet sites... Since Freud, an untraceable number of patients throughout the world experienced a psychoanalytical cure. The psychoanalytical theory progressed and grew rich with multiple contributions. It also became more and more complex, so much so that no one is able to keep track of all the venues explored, of all the assumptions proposed.
Getting out of hand
Psychoanalysis is constantly entangled in debates. The remarks of those disputing the validity of its foundation do not always seem adequate or even relevant. It is also the object of multiple debates within what has been called, maybe improperly, the 'analytical community'. It yields conflicts where the question of power is never absent, scissions, and the more or less significant competitions. Each scission involved the creation of new associations and of new structures that separate, gather, fight each other etc. Cleavages are such today that they result in raising the question of the existence of this 'analytical community' whose boundaries seem quite difficult to trace. Generally, it is not even possible anymore to start again a dialogue. The words employed by close 'tribes' found different meanings and other words, with enigmatic contents, were added through the years to the common language, up to the point where the analyst leaving his tribe experience the strange feeling sometimes to be on a foreign and yet familiar ground. However, our goal is not to work out a consensual platform between all analysts, neither an illusory "Esperanto". On the other hand, we wish to help those who will join us to carry out a reasoned reading of the sites that are now blooming a little everywhere on the Internet under the guise of psychoanalysis. Thereby, using our approach, we wish to participate in the exchange of speech and reaffirm the importance of psychoanalysis in today's world. One will also find a place where one will be able to be expressing oneself if one wants. If it belongs to each analyst taken one by one, to answer about the present and the future of psychoanalysis, those who will want to take part in the construction of the Oedipe site will find here a useful means for this task.
