Introduction: French Psychoanalysis Revisited

This chapter is an introduction to a compilation of papers on “French Psychoanalysis Revisited”: an ambitious project that aims to explore the extent to which contemporary psychoanalytic theory is inspired by the French philosophy of the 1960s and the 1970s. The chapter starts with a personal account of the intellectual atmosphere of Paris in spring 1979. One of the editors of this compilation grasped the opportunity to visit the capital as a 23-year-old Norwegian philosophy student. This was both an exciting and a shocking interlude in the young man’s intellectual journey. Decades later, he is still inspired and intrigued by the ideas circulating intellectual Paris of that period and curious to understand the extent to which they remain influential today. Supported in this curiosity by a chance meeting with an academic psychologist from the United Kingdom, the idea for this compilation was sparked. Interestingly, almost all the contributions refer to Jacques Lacan but highlight also many other relevant sources, academics, and psychoanalysts from France and from wider afield. One of the important findings of this compilation is that French psychoanalytic theory of the 1960s and the 1970s remains an important inspiration for developing new ideas about contemporary issues.