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Dominique Scarfone visited the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis from June 11 through June 14, 2010. Dr. Scarfone is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Montréal Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, Professor of Psychology at the University of Montréal, and Editor of “The Analyst at Work” section of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. His work integrates the thought of Jean Laplanche with a diverse range of other seminal theorists, including D.W. Winnicott and Michel de M'Uzan. His numerous publications include: “A Matter of Time: Actual Time and the Production of the Past”i and “Wishing for the Impossible: An Essay in Comparative Psychoanalytic Practice.”ii On April 6th, 2010, Michael Levin in San Francisco talked to Dr. Scarfone by phone in Quebec and asked him to tell us about his background and interests.
ML: I thought we should begin with your own development. How did you first get interested in psychoanalysis, and where and when did you do your training?
DS: That's quite a personal question [laughs]! I became interested in psychoanalysis when I was in university. A girlfriend of mine was reading Freud's Introductory Lectures, just for the fun of it. We started speaking about our dreams and I went to read what it was all about. I was enthralled by Freud's book. I was headed towards studying medicine then and had planned on internal medicine, but at that point I decided I would do psychiatry instead. During my medical training I read Freud steadily, thinking that I needed to be a psychiatrist in order to become a psychoanalyst. My main interest wasn't really psychiatry per se; it was psychoanalysis, itself. However, I did my psychiatry residency and just after terminating the residency I went into training at the institute in Montreal.
ML: So it began with love?
DS: Yes, love and desire [laughs]. It was a tortuous road, though. I became involved for a while with left-wing politics and worked in a community clinic for a number of years. But ps