Current Discourse

February 2022 – Present

Lights Ablaze from the Ukraine and Russia

"The guilty feeling of a people can be no less decisive for understanding political acts than economics and Realpolitik."

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine, especially in its early days, was a trauma to the European conscience."

"Je ne crois pas que mon devoir soit celui de faire le censeur, ou le prédicateur, ou le moralisateur des choix de mes collègues."

"My job is not to be a censor, or a preacher, or a moralizer of my colleagues’ choices."

"In our modern experience history awaits us with judgments and ends; but these ends and judgments have already had us."

"Mais à partir d’arguments fondés sur l’éthique psychanalytique, laquelle n’exclu en aucun cas que le psychanalyste reste un citoyen et qu’il lui revient par ailleurs, non seulement le droit mais même le devoir de cesser son travail quand il ne peut conserver la « neutralité bienveillante."

"Opposing arguments should however be based on psychoanalytical ethics, which in no way exclude the fact that the psychoanalyst remains a citizen."

"Exposing the abuses of power in one’s own country abroad is no less essential than exposing them inside it."

"We need to get together now and do what we need to do."

"La psychanalyse est née pour rectifier notre rapport au réel, non pas pour le refouler ou l’ignorer, et que pour moi me référer à cette actualité était un acte analytique."

"Psychoanalysis was born to rectify our relationship with reality, not to remove or ignore it, and that for me referring to those events was an analytical act."

"Le psychanalyste ne peut s’interdire d’entendre que là se font également entendre des mots qui disent des souffrances, parfois anciennes et que réveillent la bruyante et brûlante actualité."

"The psychoanalyst cannot refrain from hearing that there are also words that speak sufferings, sometimes old and that awaken noisy and burning news."

"Le psychanalyste ne peut pas être impartial."

"Очень бы хотелось, чтобы Кто-то остановил это ужасающее братоубийственное кровопролитие и восстановил Закон."

"Language matters."

"If we should learn anything at all from here, it is that the era of the partition and possession of the world and people by competing powerful nations should come to an end."

"Mais nous, psychanalystes, savons très bien que les différences entre les peuples ne sont jamais de « vraies » différences, mais le produit de différences entre des signifiants."

"It is bitter for us to realize that our country, which made a decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism, has now become the instigator of a new war on the European continent."

"We should not be nostalgic for a lost time, but we should be prepared to admit that a transition has most definitely occurred: we have lost the Other, and we have assumed the position of the one who supposes knowledge."

"Но мы, психоаналитики, очень хорошо знаем, что действительные различия между людьми никогда не являются “действительными” различиями, а являются продуктом различий между означающими. А означающие – часто являются политическими артефактами."

"We should not be nostalgic for a lost time, but we should be prepared to admit that a transition has most definitely occurred: we have lost the Other, and we have assumed the position of the one who supposes knowledge."

"Here, in Kyiv, we hear explosions, the roar of cannonade, we fall asleep with wailing sirens, and throughout this horror psychoanalysis is a saving respite in the experience of reality."

"Ukraine cannot be treated as a bargaining chip between stronger contenders. It has every right to choose its own international location without imposition."

"In Freud’s time and ours; life proves itself to be defined by its transience."

"The paranoiac hatred, as we know, doesn’t simply address outside enemies. There is no border between outside and inside."

"Not even the psychoanalyst can be impartial."

"Даже психоаналитик не может быть беспристрастным."

"From the few direct contacts I have had, I have come to the feeling that our Russian colleagues have, almost completely, neglected their glorious psychoanalytic past."

European Journal of Psychoanalysis