To Draw More Quickly than One's Shadow

At first sight, the interpretive endeavour of Diane Casoni and Louis Brunet1 applied to a subject of burning relevance could please only those who claim that psychoanalytical colleagues should involve themselves more in the public arena. There are even those who wish that some of us become columnists, ready to react to events that would benefit from a psychoanalytic reading; in turn, a profession that is lacking in clients would profit from more exposure.

In this case, the commentary takes the form of a scientific article written by two researchers whose credibility rests on their double allegiance as academics and psychoanalysts, one reinforcing the other. Here, the psychological portrait of a terrorist is authorized by the “psychoanalytic psychodynamics” of the witness of its actions and vice versa. Let us note, however, that this witness is someone talking on the couch of an analyst.

Two questions must be posed here: Does the evident difference in levels—the psychology of the supposed terrorist and the psychoanalysis of the witness—allow such a transition? And within the analytical setting to which the authors refer as their field of research, to what extent would the analyst of the witness-analysand of the September 11 catastrophe be less a witness of the same event and not subjected to the same perturbation as its patient?

Besides, the patient is not mistaken when he says to his analyst, at the beginning of the session, “I guess we both need analysts today.” The author-analyst of “Psychological Effects of Terrorism” writes in the first person plural: “We saw people running madly… we heard the survivors … we listened to parents… our witnessing this horror…” Hence, who in a moment of such great intensity could claim to be the witness of the witness, but even more impossibly the analyst of the witness?

Don Carveth, in his editorial, informs us that “No more than two weeks subsequent to the horrifying events in New York and Washington last September 11, Dianne Casoni a