Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen | |
---|---|
Born | 1951 |
Awards | 1987 – Prix de la Psyché 1994 – The Salomon Katz Distinguished Lectureship in the Humanities 1997 – Gradiva Award |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Comparative Literature |
Institutions | University of Washington, Seattle |
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (born 1951) is a professor of
Borch-Jacobsen is known for his positions in the controversies surrounding psychoanalysis, especially with regard to the 2005 publication of Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse ("The Black Book of Psychoanalysis") to which he was a major contributor. In a review of Borch-Jacobsen's book Folies à plusieurs. De l'hystérie à la dépression ("Many madnesses. From hysteria to depression"), Pierre-Henri Castel calls him "one of the most polemic thinkers with regard to the Freud Wars".[2]
Biography
Borch-Jacobsen studied philosophy with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, two philosophers close in thought to, and in dialogue with, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan.
In 1981 at the
In 1986 he emigrated to the United States.
Criticism of psychoanalysis
Hypnosis
In 1983, Borch-Jacobsen participated in a meeting on the subject of hypnosis at the Hôpital Fernand-Widal where he joined such other as Léon Chertok, René Girard and François Roustang in the discussion of hypnosis. The following year, he published with Éric Michaud and Jean-Luc Nancy, Hypnoses. In this book, the authors consider the whole history of therapeutic hypnosis, the psychological or sociological theory becoming suspect to dangerous regressions from intellectual, ethical and political ideas.[3]
On 21 January 1985, he presented a conference paper entitled "L'hypnose dans la psychanalyse" ("Hypnosis in psychoanalysis") to the Society of Psychosomatic Medicine. The text of this paper was then published in collaboration with Chertok in 1987, with replies from many psychoanalysists, philosophers and sociologists, such as Georges Lapassade, Octave Mannoni and Franklin Rausky.
In this paper, Borch-Jacobsen presented evidence that psychoanalytic transference is a form of altered state of consciousness, comparable with those that had existed in the work of psychotherapies which predate psychoanalysis, from Shamanism to the hypnotism of the Nancy School, by way of animal magnetism. He averred that "le phénomène du transfert n'est rien d'autre, de l'aveu même de Freud, que le resurgissement, au sein du dispositif analytique, de la relation (du « rapport ») caractéristique du dispositif hypnotique : dépendance, soumission ou encore… valorisation exclusive de la personne du médecin" ("On Freud's own admission, the phenomenon of transference is nothing other than the resurgence, in the bosom of [psycho analytical] techniques, of the characteristic relationship (of 'rapport') of hypnosis techniques: dependence, submission, or again... exclusive worship of the doctor").[4] He emphasised that there is consequently an important risk of suggestion on the part of the psychoanalyst, even more so when the psychoanalyst himself is not conscious of these phenomena.
Borch-Jacobsen then reaffirmed that
Bertrand Méheust rebuked Borch-Jacobsen for accepting without further discussion a dated view of hypnotherapy, bequeathed by the positivist institutional medicine of the 19th century. between the higher functions of intelligence and the immediacy of instinct.
The case of Anna O.
In 1996 he completed a treatise on the case of Bertha Pappenheim, "Anna O.", subtitled Une mystification centenaire ("A 100-year-old mystification"), in which, according to Claude Meyer, he "met un terme à l'un des mythes fondateurs de la psychanalyse" ("put an end to one of the founding myths of psychoanalysis").[8] It is also the opinion of Elizabeth Loentz, who had also written a book on Pappenheim,[9] and Paul Roazen, who considers this work a major stage of university and historiographical work on psychoanalysis, and a fly in the ointment of the "defenders of the status quo".[10]
Publications
- Le Sujet freudien ("The Freudian Subject"), Flammarion, 1982 (revised in 1992).
- Hypnoses (with Éric Michaud and Jean-Luc Nancy), Galilée, 1984.
- Hypnose et psychanalyse ("Hypnosis and psychoanalysis") (with Léon Chertok), Dunod, 1987.
- Lacan, le maître absolu, ("Lacan, the absolute master"), Stanford University Press, 1991.
- Le lien affectif ("The Emotional Tie"), Aubier Montaigne, 1992.
- Souvenirs d'Anna O.: une mystification centenaire ("Memoirs of Anna O.: A 100-year old mystery"), 1996.
- Remembering Anna O: A Century of Mystification. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91777-81996
- Remembering Anna O: A Century of Mystification. London: Routledge.
- Folies à plusieurs : de l'hystérie à la dépression ("Many madnesses: from hysteria to depression"), Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2002.
- Constructivisme et psychanalyse ("Constructivism and psychoanalysis") (with Bernard Granger, debates with Georges Fischman), Le Cavalier Bleu, 2005.
- Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse ("The Black Book of Psychoanalysis") (with Jean Cottraux, Jacques Van Rillaer, Didier Pleux) (Catherine Meyer, ed.), Les Arènes, 2005.
- Le dossier Freud. Enquête sur l'histoire de la psychoanalyse ("Freud's dossier. An inquiry on the history of psychoanalysis") (co-authored with Sonu Shamdasani), Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2006.
- Making Minds and Madness: From Hysteria to Depression, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis (co-authored with Sonu Shamdasani). Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Awards
- 1987 – Prix de la Psyché (awarded by the Association Française d'études et de Recherches Psychiatriques)
- 1994 – The Salomon Katz Distinguished Lectureship in the Humanities, University of Washington
- 1997 – Gradiva Award for Best General Book (awarded by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis).[1]
References
- ^ a b c "People - Faculty - Borch-Jacobsen". University of Washington. Archived from the original on February 4, 2009. Retrieved 8 December 2009.
- ^ Castel, Pierre-Henri. "Folies à plusieurs. De l'hystérie à la dépression ("Many madnesses. From hysteria to depression")". Revue d'histoire des sciences humaines (in French). 2003/1 (8): 161–177. Retrieved 8 December 2009.
- ^ Méheust, Bertrand (1999), Somnambulisme et médiumnité [Sleepwalking and mediiumship] (in French), Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, p. 293
- ^ Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel (1987), Hypnose et psychanalyse [Hypnosis and psychoanalysis] (in French), Dunod, p. 45
- ^ Cherok, Léon (1987), Hypnose et psychanalyse [Hypnosis and psychotherapy] (in French), Dunod, p. 2
- ^ Méheust, p. 31
- ^ Méheust, p. 292
- ^ Meyer, Claude (2007), Une histoire des représentations. Contribution à une archéologie de la société de la connaissance [A history of representation. Contribution to an archaeology of a society of knowledge] (in French), L'Harmattan, p. 186
- Hebrew Union College Press, pp. 216–217
- ^ Roazen, Paul (2002), The Trauma of Freud: Controversies in Psychoanalysis, Transaction, pp. 253–254
External links
- Usagers de therapies et producteurs de maladies ("Therapy users and illness producers"), by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
- A Zero Theory, by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
- International Network of Freud Critics