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Wishing to return to the fundamental concepts, Michel Neyraut, a member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, has published Alter ego, a brilliant essay on identification, or rather on the principle of identification. This book is a continuation of the author's fundamental reflections, first on Le transfert
(Neyraut, 1974), then on Les logiques de I'inconscient (Neyraut, 1978) and on Les raisons de I'irrationnel (Neyraut, 1997).
The key issues and problems of identification are explored over ten chapters, beginning with commentaries on quotations in the first and concluding with the notion of identeme, which is discussed at the end of the book. This lesson on identification, in the strong sense of the term lesson, that is, of an essential transmission, draws much of its inspiration from the cinema, literature, painting, and even philosophy. This reference to culture is not an illustration, but is intrinsic to the exploration of the concept of identification. Identification owes its necessity to differences. If men were all identical basic particles, they would be the same, but this identification without remainder would be insignificant. The ‘conquerors of the identical' who babble on nowadays promise nothing but sheep that are so similar that one is worth all the others,2 and all the others are only of value owing to their number. On the other hand, the cinema distracts us from life by depicting it on another stage; “this similitude between two worlds is at the heart of identification” (p. 9). Michel Neyraut not only convinces us forcefully, but does so with exceptional elegance; and he presents with humour the most subtle and the complex ideas, articulating figures and concepts in a seamless fabric.
The use of a quotation is part of the problem of identification. Michel Neyraut chooses five. Voltaire's (1759) Candide identifies with himself, Baron de Thunder-ten-tronckh; with someone else, Cunégonde; and with a model, Pangloss, that is,