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The “Here and Now” of French Psychoanalysis: Conversations with Contemporary Psychoanalysts, edited by Rachel Boué-Widawsky, presents 17 “conversations” with as many contemporary French psychoanalysts, each addressing a wide range of topics. The conversational format gives a lively, engaging tone to the book. Through this format, the editor aims to offer a current overview of “French psychoanalysis” today. Two other books have previously been published on the subject. Marion Oliner’s Cultivating Freud’s Garden in France explored the “theoretical specificities of French psychoanalysis in its historical, linguistic and cultural context” (xv) from a North American perspective. More recently, in Reading French Psychoanalysis , Dana Birksted-Breen, Sara Flanders, and Alain Gibeault “presented a panel of eminent authors, emblematic of French psychoanalytic tenets” (xv), this time from a British point of view. Boué-Widawsky’s The “Here and Now” of French Psychoanalysis“takes a different perspective by exploring the diversity of French contemporary psychoanalysis stance in the current societal debates” (xv), again from a North American vantage point. A practising psychoanalyst in New York, Boué-Widawsky draws on her experience as associate review editor for foreign books at Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association to provide this informed overview.
Despite her stated focus on “current societal debates”, Boué-Widawsky engages with a broader range of themes. Furthermore, the variety of the analysts’ wide-ranging responses lends the book a richness that resists easy summary. I shall therefore begin this review on a more “meta” level, looking at Boué-Widawsky’s project, her methodology, and the avenues her book opens for further inquiry.
But, to start with, is there even such a thing today as “French psychoanalysis”? French analysts have diverse backgrounds, theoretical orientations, and clinical approaches, and their vi