Discussion of Paper by Rousseau and Warman

It is unlikely that most readers will have the time and patience to consult the original source for Warman and Rousseau's article, and therefore they should be immensely grateful to those authors for having brought them into contact with the stunning historical document by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, the 12 volumes of his journal intime. Amiel's diary not only sheds light on a pre-Freudian self-analytical discourse, it also serves as an extraordinary record of the ways in which a 19th century, educated man conceived of his own mental afflictions in prepsychoanalytic terms and theories. While the authors are primarily concerned with the question of whether writing the journal constituted a poison or a cure for Amiel's life, they leave the question of his self-diagnosed melancholia relatively undisturbed and thus open the possibility for readers to wander along their own musings and reflections.

My own mind wandered to the writings of D. W. Winnicott, Masud Khan, and Jacques Hassoun when I read Amiel's astonishing and touching self-description of suffering from “hypochondrias of the heart,” which he dates back to his root