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This is a key text in Anzieu's work, originally published in 1975 (Anzieu 1975), which follows his paper on interpretation given at the congress of French speaking psychoanalysts in 1970 (Anzieu 1970) and precedes the publication of The Skin-Ego in 1985 (Anzieu 1985). The article is written in an unusual style for him as well, ‘original and polemical’ as characterized by Chabert (2021) in her companion review of the article. Anzieu's text is articulated in 16 points, preceded by a poetic quotation by Paul Valéry (1920), ‘Keep off the idolaters, bright watch-dog …’.
He begins by denouncing the tendency of psychoanalysis to resist engaging the shifts in the world, i.e. resulting in an entrenching orthodoxy which weakens the capacity of psychoanalysis to observe the present and to adapt, to formulate vital responses, both in the individual analytical scenario and, as we shall see, in the social or collective one. While reaffirming the Oedipal scenario as the foundation of interpretation in analysis, he points out that its application to collective scenarios could result in a failure to recognize what was lost at a crucial moment in collective history.
Anzieu's critical analysis takes up topics from his work on Freud, the anti-depressive origins of psychoanalysis, linked to Freud's father's illness and early death, highlighting how the approach in the Victorian era, based mainly on the taboo of sex, is not applicable to our era, which is marked by the problem of boundaries and a prevalence of narcissistic or borderline
personalities. Later he describes a prevalence of 1) obsessive defences against psychotic anxieties, and 2) of undifferentiated ‘hazy’ personalities, marked by emotional immaturity where the need for narcissistic renewal continues indefinitely (and with whom no laissez-faire attitude is needed in analytic sessions). Interestingly, an intolerance to comprehend and address the paranoid-schizoid position by the Freudian world (even after Melanie Klein) is