Faites des parentés psychanalytiques, non des psychanalystes enfants ! De l’institution œdipienne à l’institution affinitaire

Context

Psychoanalytic collectives and institutions that adhere to the psychoanalytic approach seem to be built around a patriarchal Oedipal logic referred to here as “hetero-patriarchal-oedipal.” The emergence of feminist currents in the social sciences and humanities offers new perspectives for understanding the dynamics and mechanisms present in this type of collective structuring exposed to constant conflicts and ruptures.

Objectives

This work aims to investigate the ways in which psychoanalytic collective bonds of Oedipal essence are constructed and to propose the creation of generative and heterogeneous psychoanalytic kinships that are not solely a reproduction of patriarchal, hierarchical, and defensive family structures subject to the domination of “fathers.”

Method

The author supports her reflection using the qualitative ethnographic method (common in the social sciences and humanities), specifically drawing from her personal experience within psychoanalytic groups and institutions. The data collected from this fieldwork are connected to psychoanalytic theories, critical studies, and feminist perspectives.

Results

The author's personal experience within psychoanalytic schools and associations attests to the numerous difficulties faced by these training places, which are determined by traumatic “family” fantasies and not, as proposed by Donna Haraway, by symbioses and affinities among the members. Freud turns the Oedipus myth into a familial and social paradigm based on various fantasies: murder, incest, jealousy, rivalry, etc. The laws of the Oedipal father and the structures they generate seem to be reproduced in authoritarian psychoanalytic institutions, resulting in the repression of heterogeneous knowledge. The cyborg model (Donna Haraway) offers a new perspective at the intersection of biology, envisioning institutions that generate new affinities through encounters between different species, implying the breakdown of boundaries between the organic and machinic, human and animal, material and informational, etc.

Interpretation

This problematic context suggests the necessary creation of affiliative and generative psychoanalytic connections based on heterogeneous theoretical connections that are not tied to an immutable authority, infantilism, fear of abandonment and exclusion, or the inhibitions of representations trapped within Oedipal complexities.