Psychoanalytic Politics

Among Western countries, France may well be the one that resisted the idea of Sigmund Freud the longest. However, by the end of the 1960's, France had more than a psychoanalytic movement: it had a widespread and deeply rooted psychoanalytic culture. At the heart of this development was a "reinvention" of psychoanalysis - as a politicized, Gallicized, and poeticized Freudianism, deeply marked by the work of Jacques Lacan - that resonated with French culture in the aftermath of the uprisings of 1968. The story of Lacan, and why his work so profoundly influenced the French psyche, is told clearly and unerringly by Sherry Turkle in this groundbreaking work.