André Green

André Green (March 12, 1927 – January 22, 2012) was a French psychoanalyst of global renown.^[1]

'Among contemporary practitioners, Andre Green...epitomizes an international spirit of independence'.^[2]

Life and career

André Green was born in Cairo, to non observant jewish parents . He studied medicine (specialising in psychiatry) at Paris Medical School and worked at several hospitals. Then, in 1965, after having finished his training as a psychoanalyst, he became a member of the Psychoanalytic Society of Paris, of which he was the president from 1986 to 1989. From 1975 to 1977 he was a vice president of the International Psychoanalytical Association and from 1979 to 1980 a professor at University College London.^[3] He died, aged 84, in Paris.

André Green was the author of numerous papers and books on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic criticism of culture and literature, some of which have also appeared in English translations.

Intellectual development: the encounter with Lacan

In the early Sixties, 'Green decided to attend Lacan's seminar, while keeping his affiliation to the Societe Psychanalytique de Paris' - a bold decision which for some time enabled him to maintain 'a somewhat fluid balance between different groups and personalities. This was a sure sign of his independent mind'.^[4] As the decade progressed however, he moved further from Lacan, and the 'final break away from Lacan came...in 1970, whe[n] he criticised Lacan's theory of the signifier'^[5] for its neglect of the affect.

'Instead of the usually defensive attitude towards Lacanism, there emerged for the first time from the ranks of the SPP an elaborate piece of theory directly confronting Lacan's ideas'.^[6] In particular, 'Green comments: "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"'.^[7]

Over the decades since, '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'.^[8]

On the analytic setting

For Green, the analytic setting is in itself a recreation of psychic reality. 'The symbolism of the setting comprises a triangular paradigm, uniting the three polarities of the dream (narcissism), 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 the Oedipus Complex '.^[9]

On the work of the negative

A significant part of Green's contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis has centred around his exploration of 'the different modalities of the work of the negative'.^[10] 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'.^[11]

Dreams are, 'for Andre Green, negative states trying to accede to symbolization', so that, as 'summed up by Adam Phillips: "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"'.^[12]

André Green was one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of our times and has created a Greenian theory of psychoanalysis (Kohon, 1999). This theory includes Freudian metapsychology, but pushes psychoanalytic thinking further towards a theory of psychotic configurations and a theory of that which has not reached representation, or is unrepresentable. Thinking is related to absence, and also to sexuality. The Greenian psychoanalytic framework may be viewed as a theory of gradients, where the total theory is more important than any one of its parts (Perelberg, 2005)^[13]. Any of the terms may represent the whole, but it is the whole that needs to be looked at.

Selected writings by André Green

• The Work of the Negative by Andre Green, Andrew Weller (Translator), Publisher: Free Association Books, 1999, ISBN 1-85343-470-1
• On Private Madness, Publisher: International Universities Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8236-3853-7
• The Chains of Eros, Publisher: Karnac Books, 2002, ISBN 1-85575-960-8
• Psychoanalysis: A Paradigm For Clinical Thinking Publisher: Free Association Books, 2005, ISBN 1-85343-773-5
• Life narcissism, death narcissism London: Free Association Books 2001, ISBN 1-85343-530-9
• Key ideas for a contemporary psychoanalysis. Misrecognition and recognition of the unconscious. London: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 1-58391-883-8
• A Dual Conception of Narcissism: Positive and Negative Organizations, (2002). Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 71:631-649

About André Green:

• 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.

References

1. ^ "Décès du psychanalyste André Green - Libération". Liberation.fr. http://www.liberation.fr/societe/01012385273-deces-du-psychanalyste-andre-green. Retrieved 2012-01-26. 
2. ^ Brett Kahr, "Introduction" , Andre Green, Play and Reflection in Donald Winnicott's Writings (London 2005) p. 6
3. ^ Alain de Mijolla: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, 3 Volume, Publisher: Gacl, 2005, ISBN 0-02-865927-9
4. ^ R. Horacio Etchegoyen "Preface", Gregorio Kohon, The Dead Mother (London 1999) p. xi-xii
5. ^ Etchegoyen, "Preface" p. xii
6. ^ E. S. Person et al, The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychoanalysis (2005) p. 432
7. ^ Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis (London 2005) p. 5n
8. ^ Etchegoyen, "Preface" p. xii
9. ^ Green, quoted by Michael Parsons, in Kohon, p. 65
10. ^ Andre Green, The Chains of Eros (London 2000)p. 55
11. ^ Michael Parsons, The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes (London 2000) p. 183-4
12. ^ Jacobus, p. 3 and n
13. ^ Perelberg, R.J. (2005) (Book Review) . Idées directrices pour une psychanalyse contemporaine. 2002. 400 pp. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 86:207-213

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Obituaries and Hommages: http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2012/01/24/the-societe-psychanalytique-de-paris-announcement-of-the-death-of-andre-green-translated-by-jonathan-house/