Letter From the French Riviera

Dear Reader,

As I write to you, the 36th Congress of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF), on the theme of “Illusions”, is being prepared in the wings of glamorous Cannes, known for its red carpets laid out for the world’s greatest film stars, to the delight of passers-by. But don’t let these appearances fool you! The French Riviera (or Côte d’Azur) is not all glitz and glamour … far from it! It has been the scene of terrible episodes in history, even recently.1 I would like to go through some of the milestones of the psychoanalytic movement in the South of France with you, to give you a very personal account of how challenging it can be to train and practise as a psychoanalyst in the region.

The extension of psychoanalysis into the South of France coincides historically with the expansion of the Lacanian movement and allows us to reflect on questions of distance and displacement, centralism, fiefdoms and strongholds, and the phenomena of dissidence and autonomy. Practising in the provinces is not easy because, as in many sectors of activity, Paris is central. The situation is so strong that you frequently hear mentions of “Paris and the French desert” or “internal colonialism”.

How was the extension of psychoanalysis organized? What was its policy? Was there any policy? Did psychoanalysis spread haphazardly? Or was it the convergence of well thought-through factors and other more random ones, linked to the historical, cultural or environmental specificities of the field?

Freud and Lacan shared the same concern to organize their own succession to counter the risk of the degeneration or extinction of psychoanalysis. There were two risks in particular: family lineage (Anna Freud, Jacques-Alain Miller2) and the institutional regulation of the accreditation system. In “The Question of Lay Analysis: Conversation with an Impartial Person” (1926), Freud, who was then trying to identify the most appropriate training for the analyst, wrote that it