The Letter, Issue 66/67, Autumn 2017/Spring 2018, Pages 69 - 74
WHY WAS PSYCHOANALYSIS FOUNDED BY AN EMIGRANT?
Charles Melman
This paper addresses the question ‘Why was psychoanalysis founded by an emigrant?’ It draws parallels between Freud’s position in relation to his father and that of both emigrant and hysteric. It is proposed that the position of the emigrant is fundamentally a guilty one in relation to the father and therefore the problem posed by emigrants is not simply at the origin of psychoanalysis but is still current to psychoanalysis.[1]
Keywords: Freud; Psychoanalysis; masochism; emigrant; hysteric; father
First of all I will say that we are - all of us - masochists. It’s the very condition of our survival. We are all masochists, which means that we live out our suffering and our problems face to face with God, as a confrontation with the very presence of the real of God, in other words, He who stops us from going too quickly to get to the end of our lives. First of all, he says that our time is His, in other words, what He has prescribed for us. A maniac is someone who wants to go too quickly to the end of his life. If we are masochistic and if that is the condition for our survival, we can’t tolerate the idea that God himself is a masochist because that would mean cutting him off from His power, as if He himself were subjected to another influence.