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Laforgue is a well-known French psychoanalyst, some of whose previous works have been translated into English. I recall his “Relativity of Reality” and his studies on Baudelaire. For the most part, let it be said at once that he adheres fairly closely to the “orthodox” Freudian school.
This volume's title can be translated as the “Psychopathology of Defeat”. It is a significant one when one notes the year of publication,—1944—a fateful year for France, for Frenchmen, for the bitter cup of defeat and the nearing hope of victory. It is interesting to speculate on the author's interest in defeat—the defeat of the human being by his own difficulties, conflicts, character structure and the more general defeat of his country by the Barbarians. Laforgue had been interested in the notion of the “neurosis of defeat” for a long time before the war. It was not a new interest for him. He draws certain conclusions from studies of defeated individuals which he hopes will prove of some consolation to his countrymen in their national disaster.
Freud had already directed attention to those who fail in their very