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These two volumes - the first a series of sensitive yet rigorously probing interviews between Didier Anzieu and Gilbert Tarab, and the second, papers on a range of psychoanalytic, cultural and aesthetic themes - form ‘envelopes’ for the exploration of the closely-bonded conceits, ‘psychic envelope’ and ‘skin ego’. In this review, by drawing on both texts, I shall concentrate on the evolution of these terms, from Anzieu's personal and professional experience, and on the question of their contribution to psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.
Prior to any conceptualisation, the diffusion of the two images through Anzieu's discourse in A Skin for Thought exposes us directly to their evocative power as they interweave every area of Anzieu's life. For the interviews encompass his excursions into literary endeavour, group work, psychodrama, as well as his attitudes to public life and politics. Although involved in the student uprisings of 1968, Anzieu now asserts the primacy of the analyst's anonymity and his obligation to keep faith with the unconscious of his patients.
Anzieu's childhood was marred by excessive cosseting or ‘muffling’ as he calls it: envelopes of care, concern and warmth with which my parents surrounded me even when I left home. I carried their load with me on my back. My vitality was hidden at the heart of an onion, under several outer coverings.
But the reliable benevolence of his father proved a vital antidote to the effects of his mother's severe psychological instability. It was Anzieu's continuing desire to support her ‘fragility of character’ and ‘take care of her’ that led to his eventual espousal of psychoanalysis. But not until the age of 50, with the conceptualisation of psychic