Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (born 1951) is a Professor of

Comparative Literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

and French at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, and the author of many works on the history and philosophy of

psychiatry Psychiatry is the specialty (medicine), medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psych ...

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

and

hypnosis Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...

. Born to Danish parents, he began his studies in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

and emigrated to the United States in 1986. His constructivist analysis of the co-production of psychical "facts" emphasises the accuracy of historical accounts of

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitt ...

s. Borch-Jacobsen is known for his positions in the controversies surrounding psychoanalysis, especially with regard to the 2005 publication of ''Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse'' ("The Black Book of Psychoanalysis") to which he was a major contributor. In a review of Borch-Jacobsen's book ''Folies à plusieurs. De l'hystérie à la dépression'' ("Many madnesses. From hysteria to depression"), Pierre-Henri Castel calls him "one of the most polemic thinkers with regard to the ''Freud Wars''".

Biography

Borch-Jacobsen studied philosophy with

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe ( , ; 6 March 1940 – 28 January 2007) was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator. Lacoue-Labarthe published several influential works with his friend Jean-Luc Nancy. Lacoue-Labarthe wa ...

and

Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...

, two philosophers close in thought to, and in dialogue with, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan. In 1981 at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ea ...

he submitted his doctoral dissertation on ''The Freudian Subject'' and then began teaching in the department of

Psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

at Vincennes University in Paris, where Jacques Lacan had first made his mark. In 1986 he emigrated to the United States.

Criticism of psychoanalysis

Hypnosis

In 1983, Borch-Jacobsen participated in a meeting on the subject of

at the Hôpital Fernand-Widal where he joined such other as

Léon Chertok Léon Chertok or Lejb Tchertok (31 October 1911 in Vilnius, Vilna Governorate – 6 July 1991 in Deauville), was a French psychiatrist known for his work on hypnosis and psychosomatic medicine. Biography Chertok obtained his doctorate in medicine ...

René Girard René Noël Théophile Girard (; ; 25 December 1923 – 4 November 2015) was a French polymath, historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the aut ...

and François Roustang in the discussion of hypnosis. The following year, he published with Éric Michaud and

, ''Hypnoses''. In this book, the authors consider the whole history of therapeutic hypnosis, the psychological or

sociological Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...

theory becoming suspect to dangerous regressions from intellectual, ethical and political ideas. On 21 January 1985, he presented a conference paper entitled "L'hypnose dans la psychanalyse" ("Hypnosis in psychoanalysis") to the Society of Psychosomatic Medicine. The text of this paper was then published in collaboration with Chertok in 1987, with replies from many psychoanalysists, philosophers and sociologists, such as Georges Lapassade,

Octave Mannoni Dominique-Octave Mannoni (; 29 August 1899, in Sologne – 30 July 1989, in Paris) was a French psychoanalyst and author. Life After spending more than twenty years in Madagascar, Mannoni returned to France after World War II where he, inspired ...

and Franklin Rausky. In this paper, Borch-Jacobsen presented evidence that psychoanalytic

transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...

is a form of

altered state of consciousness An altered state of consciousness (ASC), also called altered state of mind or mind alteration, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking state. By 1892, the expression was in use in relation to hypnosis, though there ...

, comparable with those that had existed in the work of psychotherapies which predate psychoanalysis, from Shamanism to the hypnotism of the

Nancy School The Nancy School was a French hypnosis-centered school of psychotherapy. The origins of the thoughts were brought about by Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault in 1866, in Nancy, France. Through his publications and therapy sessions he was able to gain th ...

, by way of animal magnetism. He averred that "" ("On Freud's own admission, the phenomenon of transference is nothing other than the resurgence, in the bosom of sychonalytical] techniques, of the characteristic relationship (of 'rapport') of hypnosis techniques: dependence, submission, or again... exclusive worship of the doctor"). He emphasised that there is consequently an important risk of suggestion on the part of the psychoanalyst, even more so when the psychoanalyst himself is not conscious of these phenomena. Borch-Jacobsen then reaffirmed that

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

, after having started to use the suggestive hypnotic psychotherapy of

Hippolyte Bernheim Hippolyte Bernheim (17 April 1840, in Mulhouse – 2 February 1919, in Paris) was a French physician and neurologist. He is chiefly known for his theory of suggestibility in relation to hypnotism. Life Born into a Jewish family, Bernheim receiv ...

in 1887, replaced it with the cathartic method in 1899, no longer using hypnosis as a means of direct suggestion, but to bring out suppressed feelings of patients' traumas. After practicing using free association in 1892, Freud totally abandoned hypnosis at the end of 1896. This is explained in the following manner by Chertok: "" ("In his opposition to hypnosis, Freud was known to have founded a scientific psychotherapy, destined, as such, to become the psychotherapy ''par excellence''. The interpretation and awareness thus became the fulcrum of the cure. The affectivity in the new method certainly could not be discounted, but in it one can find it being channelled into transference, and by that, come to be controlled and put it at the service of knowledge. Such was the ambition of the founder of psychoanalysis reud at the turn of the century which was still very much filled with the spirit of Positivism"). It is precisely this posture of Freud's that the consciousness is "dominating" that was put into question by Borch-Jacobsen. Bertrand Méheust rebuked Borch-Jacobsen for accepting without further discussion a dated view of hypnotherapy, bequeathed by the positivist institutional medicine of the 19th century. Furthermore, he argues that hypnosis follows a state of absolute passivity and therefore hurts well-being, and that hypnosis is induced in someone in which all consciousness is disconnected, a being totally immersed in the inner self, indeed a puppet who thinks and lives totally by the workings of another.Méheust, p. 292 He takes sides with Puységur and

Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

, stating that lucid, magnetic phenomena are assumed to establish a kind of synergy between the higher functions of intelligence and the immediacy of instinct.

The case of Anna O.

In 1996 he completed a treatise on the case of

Bertha Pappenheim Bertha Pappenheim (27 February 1859 – 28 May 1936) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association (''). Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented pat ...

, "Anna O.", subtitled ("A 100-year-old mystification"), in which, according to Claude Meyer, he "" ("put an end to one of the founding myths of psychoanalysis"). It is also the opinion of Elizabeth Loentz, who had also written a book on Pappenheim, and Paul Roazen, who considers this work a major stage of university and historiographical work on psychoanalysis, and a fly in the ointment of the "defenders of the status quo".

Publications

* ("The Freudian Subject"), Flammarion, 1982 (revised in 1992). * (with Éric Michaud and

), Galilée, 1984. * ("Hypnosis and psychoanalysis") (with

), Dunod, 1987. * , ("Lacan, the absolute master"), Stanford University Press, 1991. * ("The Emotional Tie"), Aubier Montaigne, 1992. * ("Memoirs of Anna O.: A 100-year old mystery"), 1996. * ("Many madnesses: from hysteria to depression"), Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2002. * ("Constructivism and psychoanalysis") (with Bernard Granger, debates with Georges Fischman), Le Cavalier Bleu, 2005. * ("The Black Book of Psychoanalysis") (with Jean Cottraux, Jacques Van Rillaer, Didier Pleux) (Catherine Meyer, ed.), Les Arènes, 2005. * ("Freud's dossier. An inquiry on the history of psychoanalysis") (with

Sonu Shamdasani Sonu Shamdasani (born 1962) is a London-based author, editor in chief, and professor at University College London. His research and writings focus on Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), and cover the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid- ...

), Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2006. * ''Making Minds and Madness: From Hysteria To Depression'', Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (May 29, 2009)

Awards

* 1987 – Prix de la Psyché (awarded by the ) * 1994 – The Salomon Katz Distinguished Lectureship in the Humanities, University of Washington * 1997 –

Gradiva Award ''Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva'' (german: Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens "Gradiva") is an essay written in 1907 by Sigmund Freud that subjects the novel '' Gradiva'' by Wilhelm Jensen, and especially its protagonist, to psychoana ...

for Best General Book (awarded by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis).

References

External links

("Therapy users and illness producers"), by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
''A Zero Theory''
by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel French philosophers French emigrants to the United States American philosophers Hypnosis Constructivism 1951 births Living people University of Washington faculty French male writers