Edouard Pichon

Edouard Pichon born in 1890 in Sarcelles and died in 1940 is a grammairien and Psychanalyste French, cofounder of the first company of French psychoanalysis: the psychoanalytical Company of Paris (SPP).

Biography

Edouard Pichon is originating in a Burgundian family, his father initially vine grower becomes notary. It is him which obliges Edouard to be directed towards medicine whereas the Pichon young person dreamed only of letters and grammar following the example his uncle Jacques Damourette.

In 1910 Pichon is extern of Paris, it will meet Louis Aragon there. During the First World War it is engaged as army medical officer, it then feels the first signs of the acute rheumatoid arthritis which will end up carrying it. Its life will be marked by this disease which will oblige it with multiple hospitalizations and will handicap it at the point to force to him to circulate in wheelchair. It is looked after by a treatment containing Salicylate, which causes delirious episodes to him. It will choose this disease like subject of its thesis in medicine.

In 1924 he is doctor of medicine, specialized in pediatry and named infantile chief-assistant of private clinic. He will be named then at the Bretonneau hospital where he meets Francoise Marette who will be known later under the name of Francoise Dolto and which becomes its pupil.

After its meeting with Rene Laforgue it carries out triple career of doctor, psychoanalyst and linguist.

In 1927 he marries Helene Janet who is tubercular patient and thus becomes son-in-law of Pierre Janet, that some regard as one of the most notable adversaries of the psychoanalysis, while being one of the cofounders of the SPP.

A man with the multiple faces

The linguist

The true passion of Pichon was undoubtedly the language. It was initiated there very early by his uncle Jacques Damourette with whom it will sign a monumental work which arises as a grammar in seven volumes to the style baroque entitled Of the words to the thought which wants to describe in an exhaustive way the state of the French language between 1911 and 1940.

The title of the work is registered against the current dominating of the grammairiens of the time. Whereas the latter left the idea to arrive at the language, Damourette and Pichon leave the language to show how the thought emerges. Elisabeth Roudinesco points out that this position is contradictory with the positions that Pichon will hold with regard to the psychoanalysis.

It is in Pichon that Lacan will borrow the term of Forclusion which defines the psychic mechanism structural feature psychotic.

The pediatrist

Édourard Pichon takes part for Anna Freud in the quarrel which opposes it to Melanie Klein. He thinks, like the first, that the psychoanalysis of the children must be subordinate to the educational authority.

He proposes to create a new discipline that he names psychopedeutic which consists of a kind of syncretism of the thesis of Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Alfred Binet and Henri Wallon. He writes a work the psychic development of the child who will have a very great success in which he does not hesitate to support the most contradictory positions. The author condemns the work of the married women to it, states himself in favor to speak to the infants but recommends to mow the young boys so that they do not resemble to the various girls and other opinions on a strongly doctrinary tone.

The psychoanalyst

Pichon was a fervent supporter of the theory of the Dégénérescence which he wanted to fight with the means of cathartic therapies in which he arranged the psychoanalysis, as well as the “purgative methods” or “the catholic auricular confession”. The psychoanalysis was thus for him only one psychotherapy among others. It had been analyzed by Eugenie Sokolnicka.

But especially Pichon, into faithful maurrassien, could conceive the French psychoanalysis only . It attacks the IPA but primarily because it appears to him as a “organization collectivist” whereas he says “I conceive readily the protective monarchy of diversities as the transposition in the social order of what in psychological private clinic a quite main heart of oneself is”. As Elisabeth Roudinesco notes it the psychoanalysis according to Pichon is primarily “pichonienne”.

The maurrassien

Extreme man of the right, Pichon was an unconditional admiror of Charles Maurras. He will however not hesitate to assert psychoanalyst and to defend this theory against that which he called his “admirable Master”. He will die at the beginning of the Second world war what will avoid to him making choices which would undoubtedly have been tearing.

Internal bonds

Works

  • Of the words to the thought, test of Grammar of the French language (as a coll with Damourette) ED. of Atrey, Paris, 1911-1940

  • the psychic development of the child , Masson and Co, Paris, 1953
  • stammering: its nature and its treatment by Edouard Pichon and Suzanne Borel-Maisonny, Masson 1936

Random links:Nicolas Vignier | One morning good hour | Big air | The Revenge on Fu Manchu | Luigi Luccheni | Nouvelle_économie