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Michel Fain (1917–2007) was an eminent figure of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (he was both its President and also the Director of the Institute), and had a profound influence on French psychoanalysis. Introducing the work of this great thinker is no simple task. His first contributions date back to 1950. His writing is difficult, because his texts are always very condensed. His work is subtle and complex; never systematic and doctrinaire. It is a way of thinking that is in search of itself, that wanders and rediscovers its internal coherence, without giving the impression that the author is pursuing a project.
In Michel Fain (Aisenstein 2000), I wrote that this author strolls through metapsychology and clinical practice in the manner of Rameau's Nephew,† of whom Diderot said that he compared his ideas to “beautiful strollers” (“belles promeneuses”), always ready as he was to follow them, whether wise or mad … His work does not claim to be built or organised around a guiding theme. It could be compared to a musical sequence in which the multiplicity of the themes discussed and their diversity allows for an interlacing of encounters and cross-fertilisations that are forever becoming richer. Reading his work is arduous, because Michel Fain was a theoretician who was demanding both on himself and his reader, whose task he refused to make simpler. No concessions are made to style or clarity. Michel Fain prided himself on not writing for disciples, but for his peers. That is why he implied what he considered should be known, rather than saying it; he did not explain, and boasted of being ignorant in the art of developing ideas in writing.
His first texts had a clear orientation towards psychosomatics: “Abords psychosomatiques de l’hypertension arterielle dite essentielle” [Psychosomatic approaches to so-called essential high blood pressure] (Fain 1950); “Le facteur conflictuel dans l’étiologie des ulcères gastroduodénaux” [The conflictual factor in the aetiology of ga