I would like to tell you about Anne Dufourmantelle, who was a french psychanalyst and philosoph I admire very sincerely.
To get started, she was born in Paris, in 1964. She had english and french identities. She initially lived in France, then in Spain and Central America, and had end her days in France. She was an outstanding professor of Historia, Philosophia and Psychanalysis. She instructed in the following universities : Paris La Sorbonne, Brown and New-York Universities. She also worked in Ecole Normale of Architecture and in Ecole Normale of Psychanalysis. She was a « Freud Circle» member.
Furthermore, she was a remarkable writer : she were employed in many publishing houses and had participated, as a columnist, to the Liberation journal. In 1998, she received the Prix Raymond De Boyer, from the Academie Française. So, she published a significant number of books, including some of them particularly treated by psychology :
– La sauvagerie maternelle, 2001. In this publication, she wrote about child-and-mother relation, that can be very wild, and she discussed about violence, separation, abandonment and sacrifice.
– In Eloge du risque (2011), she related opportunities and interests to taking risks, like an evenment and an engagement in way of life, as a possibilty to access unhoped.
– In Intelligence du rêve (2012), she treated about relationships between dreams and consciousness.
– En cas d’amour (2012) is a book in which one she recounted analysis cases of people who talked to her about their love stories in therapy. She highlighted unconscient’s forces and processes, and identified love than a main evenment of life.
– In Puissance de la douceur (2013), she deepened the notion of gentleness and showed its paradox points in human and social relationships : sensoriality, animality, dependance, helping each others…
Finally, I can’t resume all the work of Anne Dufourmantelle but I wanted to pay tribute to her because her writings are an important source of inspiration for me : all of her clinical illustrations helped me to understand and make sense in several situations. What’s more, I particularly like her deep and poetic feather and I sincerely thank her for her contribution in our community.
She was married with Frederic Boyer, another notable writer. She unfortunately died prematurely in 2017 because of a cardiac arrest and she sadly left three children.
If you are interested, you can consult :
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Dufourmantelle
https://www.franceculture.fr/personne-anne-dufourmantelle
The words I have learned :
outstanding : émérite
columnist : chroniqueur
wild : sauvage
to deepen : approfondir
what’s more : qui plus est
la plume de l’écrivain : the feather of the writer
Vanessa REGNIER – M2 PCPI