Life and career
André Green was born inIntellectual development
Encounter with Lacan
In the early 1960s, Green attended Jacques Lacan's seminars without abandoning his affiliation to the SPP - a bold decision which for some time enabled him to straddle the competing strands of French psychoanalysis from an independent position. As the decade progressed however, he moved further from Lacan, and finally broke with the latter in 1970 by criticising his concept of the signifier for its neglect of affect.R. Horacio Etchegoyen "Preface", Gregorio Kohon, ''The Dead Mother'' (London 1999), p. xii. By doing so, he replaced the SPP's normally defensive approach towards Lacanianism with a direct theoretical confrontation. Green points out that whereas "Lacan is saying that the unconscious is structured like a language ... when you read Freud, it is obvious that this proposition doesn't work for a minute. Freud very clearly opposes the unconscious (which he says is constituted by thing-presentations and nothing else) to the pre-conscious. What is related to language can only belong to the pre-conscious." In his later work Green would become increasingly hostile toward the Lacanian school, disparaging it as being not far from a StalinistThe Greenian synthesis
Over the decades since, R. Horacio Etchegoyen concluded that what he called "the complex itinerary of Andre Green's prolific work" has continued to demonstrate the intellectually independent way in which "Green is a Freudian analyst who has managed to integrate in a lucid synthesis the influence of authors as diverse as Lacan, Bion, and, especially, Winnicott". The result was to make André Green the creator of what has been called a Greenian theory of psychoanalysis (Kohon, 1999). Building on Freudian metapsychology, Green elaborated a further theory of the unrepresentable, relating thinking to absence as well as to sexuality. While containing a multiplicity of local contributions - on the central phobic position; subjective disengagement; unconscious recognition; the dead mother; and more - the Greenian psychoanalytic framework has been seen as a totality, producing something greater than the sum of its parts.Theoretical contributions
On the work of the negative
A significant part of Green's contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis has centred on his exploration of 'the different modalities of the work of the negative'. He has highlighted the way 'accepting the negation of what was there is necessary for relationships to new things to become possible' - the way that 'to accept the reality of lack...opens the door, through a process of working-through, to new experience, new ideals and new object-relationships'.On the analytic setting
For Green, the analytic setting is in itself a recreation of psychic reality, Michael Parsons proposes, quoting the early Green:The symbolism of the setting comprises a triangular paradigm, uniting the three polarities of the ''dream'' (narcissism Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism, named after the Greek mythological figure ''Narcissus'', has evolv ...), of ''maternal caring'' (from the mother, following Winnicott), and of the ''prohibition of incest'' (from the father, following Freud). What the psychoanalytic apparatus gives rise to, then, is ''the symbolisation of the unconscious structure of theOedipus Complex In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex is a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter's attitude of desire ...''.
On dreams
Mary Jacobus argues that for André Green, dreams are "negative states trying to accede to symbolization." In addition, she invokes Adam Phillips, who writes, "Dreams and affects, and states of emptiness or absence have been the essential perplexities of Green's work because they are the areas of experience...in which the nature of representation itself is put at risk."Moral narcissism
Green saw moral narcissism as the attempt to elevate oneself above ordinary human needs and attachments - anBibliography
Books
In French
* ''Un œil en trop. Le complexe d'Oedipe dans la tragédie'', Les Éditions de Minuit (1969) * ''L'enfant de ça. Pour introduire une psychose blanche'', Les Éditions de Minuit (1973) * ''Le discours vivant: la conception psychoanalytique de l'affect'', PUF, "Quadrilege" (1973) * ''Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort'', Les Éditions de Minuit (1983) * ''Le langage dans la psychanalyse'', 250p, in Langages. Deuxièmes Rencontres psychanalytiques d'Aix-en-Provence, 1983, Les Belles Lettres (1984) * ''La folie privée: psychanalyse de cas-limites'', Gallimard (1990) * ''Le complexe de castration'', PUF, "Que sais-je?" (1990) * ''La déliaison: psychanalyse, anthropologie et littérature'', Les Belles Lettres (1992) * ''Révélations de l'inachèvement. À propos du carton de Londres de Léonard de Vinci'', Flammarion (1992) * ''Le travail du négatif'', Les Éditions de Minuit (1993) * ''Un psychanalyste engagé. Conversations avec Manuel Marcias'', Calman-Lévy (1994) * ''La causalité psychique: entre nature et culture'', Odile Jacob (1995) * ''Propédeutique. La métapsychologie revisitée'', Champ Vallon (1995) * ''Les Chaînes d'Éros: actualité du sexuel'', Odile Jacob (1997) * ''La diachronie en psychanalyse'', Les Éditions de Minuit (2000) * ''Le temps éclaté'', Les Éditions de Minuit (2000) * ''Méconnaissance et reconnaissance de l'inconscient. Idées directrices pour une psychanalyse contemporaine'', PUF (2002) * ''La pensée clinique'', Odile Jacob (2002) * Hamlet ''et hamlet: une interprétation psychanalytique de la représentation'', PUF (2003) * ''La lettre et la mort. Promenade d'un psychanalyste à travers la litterature: Proust, Shakespeare, Conrad, Borges'', Entretiens avec Dominique Eddé'','' Denoel (2004) * ''Jouer avec Winnicott'', PUF, translation by Martine Lussier (2004) * ''Sortilèges de la séduction: lectures critiques du Songe d'une nuit d'été; Antoine et Cléopâtre; La Tempête; Le Phénix et la Colombe de William Shakespeare'', Odile Jacob (2005) * ''Associations (presque) libres d'un psychanalyste'', entretiens avec Maurice Corcos, Albin Michel (2006) * ''Pourquoi les pulsions de destruction ou de mort?'', Éditions du Panama (2007) * ''Joseph Conrad: le premier commandement'', Éditions In Press (2008) * ''L'aventure négative. Lecture psychanalytique d'Henry James,'' Éditions Hermann (2009) * ''Illusions et désillusions du travail psychanalytique'', Odile Jacob (2010) * ''Du signe au discours. Psychanalyse et théories du langage'', Ithaque (2011) * ''La clinique psychanalytique contemporaine'', Ithaque (2012) * ''Penser la psychanalyse avec Bion, Lacan, Winnicott, Laplanche, Aulagnier, Anzieu, Rosolato'', Ithaque (2013) * ''La Clinique du négatif. Narcissisme, destructivité et dépression'', Ithaque (2022)In English
*''The Work of the Negative'' by Andre Green, Andrew Weller (Translator), Publisher: Free Association Books, 1999, * ''On Private Madness'', Publisher: International Universities Press, 1997, * ''The Chains of Eros'', Publisher: Karnac Books, 2002, * ''Psychoanalysis: A Paradigm For Clinical Thinking'' Publisher: Free Association Books, 2005, * ''Life narcissism, death narcissism'' London: Free Association Books 2001, * ''Key ideas for a contemporary psychoanalysis. Misrecognition and recognition of the unconscious''. London: Routledge, 2005. * 'A Dual Conception of Narcissism: Positive and Negative Organizations', (2002). ''Psychoanalytic Quarterly'', 71:631-649 * ''The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse'', The New Library of Psychoanalysis, London and NY, 1999,Edited volumes
* ''L'avenir d'une désillusion'', PUF, 2000 (with Otto Kernberg) * ''Courants de la psychanalyse contemporaine'', PUF, 2001 * ''Le travail psychanalytique'', PUF, 2003References
Further reading
* ''The dead mother. The Work of André Green,'' ed. by Gregorio Kohon, London: Routledge 1999. (including an interview with A.G.) * ''Who's Who in France 2005-2006,'' Levallois-Parret: Éditions Jacques Lafitte 2005, p. 976-977.External links