Love Among the Signifiers

There are certainly more conventional approaches to psychoanalytic discussions in France than are represented by the articles in this issue. It seems to me that what the editors have tried to do, as far as possible, has been to maintain a theme of confrontation, after the name of the organization under whose auspices the exchange in Paris took place. The articles here show some of the differences in the intellectual approach of French psychoanalytic writers, so that for an American audience there is an intellectual confrontation with what is different and distinct in French psychoanalytic thought. With a range of topics so disparate as those in the articles presented here, it is impossible to give a systematic and thorough response. Because the articles show a special emphasis on language, it is primarily to language and to the signifier, this entity so strange perhaps to an American audience, that I shall direct my remarks. Even then I must be somewhat impressionistic and superficial, and there are many important issues that I cannot touch in the space available.

A few words are in order on the historical situation and new approach that characterizes the work of Confrontation. This group, founded in 1974 by René Major and the late Dominique Geahchan, has been of importance, I think, in contemporary French psychoanalysis. For all that its name might imply, this group has represented a synthetic or healing tendency which has developed of late in French psychoanalytic circles. Analysts, who once would have nothing to do with one another, now meet in Confrontation. A dialogue has been opened between members of the analytic associations,