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As Dana Birksted-Breen and Sara Flanders note in their introduction to Reading French Psychoanalysis (2010, 1): “While psychoanalysts all over the world recognize their Freudian origins it is undeniable that psychoanalysis has developed along different lines of interest in different geographical areas due to cultural phenomena and to the influence of important or charismatic figures”. Perhaps this is nowhere clearer than in the different psychoanalytic cultures that have developed in two countries that are geographically very close neighbours in Europe: France and Great Britain. Putting to one side for the moment the influence of figures such as Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, psychoanalysis in the two countries has been hugely influenced by the cultural milieux in which it has been located; in France psychoanalysis has traditionally been tied closely to philosophy, while in Great Britain empiricism and reliance on clinical evidence have been predominant in the psychoanalytic discourse.
While I was very pleased to be invited to discuss this paper, I soon found it was a far more difficult task than I had first envisaged. Francis Pasche’s references to philosophical concepts and (until the latter part of the paper) his forgoing a discussion of actual clinical technique made this a difficult read. I frequently had to resort to reference books, colleagues and Google to enable me to understand some of the terms used in his paper. Despite this research and consultation, I am sure that some of Pasche’s subtler points continue to escape me. But I also found the paper of great interest and a stimulus for clarifying my own thoughts about the origins and the development of the superego and the differences between Pasche’s views and my own.
For many years I had been under the impression that the important role of the superego, in the understanding of mental health and pathology, was understated in French psychoanalysis. There are only scattered references to the conc