Madeleine Baranger

Madeleine Baranger, who passed away on 19 June 2017 at the age of 97, was born in France in 1920. A graduate of Classical Studies at the University of Toulouse (1941), she was a member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Association since 1959. Between 1954 and 1965, she and Willy Baranger founded the Uruguayan Psychoanalytical Association, organising the Institute of Psychoanalysis, where she was Director from 1955 to 1964, collaborating with the Revista Uruguaya de Psicoanálisis (Uruguayan Journal of Psychoanalysis), and acting as a training analyst, supervisor, and professor. She continued these activities at the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association upon her return to Buenos Aires in 1966, always maintaining her anti-authoritarian, anti-dogmatic, and anti-Pygmalion position as a champion of tolerance and respect for the other and for the creative potential within each subject. She received the Konex Award in 1996 and the international Sigourney Award in 2008.

Her work can be seen as a series of investigations on a range of thematic clusters related to the theory of technique, psychopathology, and the impact of the ethical and ideological on the analytic task.

She authored papers presented at several Congresses of the International Psychoanalytical Association, as well as books and articles published in Spanish and translated into French, English, Italian, and Turkish.

She published numerous papers in prestigious psychoanalytic journals, including the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association's Revista de Psicoanálisis (Journal of Psychoanalysis), and the Journal of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association.

Madé's entire body of work serves as a call to broaden the borders of psychoanalysis and to keep alive the promise of its galvanising, questioning power. Her manner of participating, more than giving answers, was to pose questions. This is the most poignant aspect of her work: its questioning.

Her person and her teachings have left a mark on more than one generation of psychoanalysts, and I am sure she will continue to have this effect on those who seek to imbibe and be nourished and enriched by her steadfast belief in the liberating power of psychoanalysis. Indeed, psychoanalysis represents the science of anti-destiny; the possibility of change in the face of an obstructed future; the science of both the liberation of the subject's psychic life and the liberation of peoples from the repetitive shackles of the unconscious.

Not only did Madé, as author/teacher of her psychoanalytic body of work, create this work, she also created an interlocutor with whom she exchanged experiences and whose thought she stimulated in a creative fashion.

She was not an author who captivated with text; rather, text played the role of a text-window, which the reader could open/close/peek through or leave ajar in order to regulate the intensity of light and be able to enjoy the text as well as confront it. Readers thus actively become re-readers, and re-reading fertilises their thinking.

Madé's oral and written words had the eloquent effect of an experience, both profound and intimate, indelible and transformative.

I would like to share an encounter I had with Madé when she turned 90 that meaningfully illustrates her style. I asked her what word had formed a backbone in her life and in the construction of her psychoanalytic work. Without hesitation and with a broad smile, she responded: “coherence.”

I have always, since I was a little girl, been more worried about being coherent with myself than about submitting to what my parents expected of me.

It always seemed most important not to betray myself.

I’ve always had a strong need for coherence. I remember that as an adolescent, I loved to read Montaigne because of his exceptional thinking. I admired his sincerity and his rejection of the masks of truth.

Being coherent and loyal to what you feel, think, say, and act ultimately makes you your own good friend. The best friendship you can make is your own. Because in other friendships, at some point, something can go wrong.

During that same meeting she told me the following:

For me, literature and philosophy have always been a great resource. Reading has played a very important role in my life, even now I am constantly reading literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, but not for utilitarian purposes, just because I am interested. I have always been interested in refining and affirming my feelings and my thoughts. What has saved me since I was a little girl was curiosity—I have always been interested in everything. I wanted to know. I needed to understand what was happening in my home.

I couldn't accept living in a world where I didn't understand what was going on. I always wanted to know more, I have always been very curious. I always wanted to understand myself by understanding my surroundings. I remember that when I lived in Rodez, in the middle of France, I had already learned to read by the time I was four years old. I would ask them to teach me the letters and the numbers, and when I started school at five and a half I had already read a lot of stories. I also remember that in primary school, they would lend us a book on Saturdays. I would walk home alone, but I was so excited and curious to know what the book said that I would walk down the street reading the book, and by the time I got home I had already finished it. But when I was eight, we moved to Toulouse. I got sick there and had to spend a year in bed. During that time, my father, who was a professor of literature, would read me plays, and when I started high school I was already quite familiar with classic French theatre. I would get desperate when we would spend two months in the countryside and I didn't have enough to read. Reading was a refuge for me. My parents would buy me two books for our vacations, but it wasn't close to enough.

Later, at university, I studied to be a professor of classical literature, in Latin and Greek, and that is where I met Willy.

Willy was born in Algiers, but his family moved to Paris a few years later. When World War II broke out, his mother was afraid that Paris would be invaded, so she sent Willy to study in Toulouse. That is where we met.

I also remember that I always wanted to have more money to buy more books. For me, reading is a good psychological refuge.

I asked her if a psychological refuge is related somehow to the term “bastion” or “bulwark.”

She replied:

I don't think so, because a psychological refuge opens up new thoughts and knowledge, while Willy and I conceived bastion as an intersubjective concept, between analyst and analysand, in which a communion and a confusion is perpetuated between the two members of the analytic situation that immobilises and prevents the development of a process.

“Theory of technique” is not a bad word

I would now like to share with you a part of a text published by Madé in 1997 that really stands out:

I choose to hold onto this term and to vindicate the notion of “theory of technique” both for seminar teaching and in supervision, as well as in general in our private practice and our reflections on what we are doing: this reflection is, precisely, what it is all about. It is surprising how little there is in the psychoanalytic literature—at least in what I have access to—that deals specifically with the “theory of technique.” There are many papers on technique, and there are papers on psychopathology and theoretical (metapsychological) papers that attempt to further specify and explore the concepts. Yet explicitly about “theory of technique,” there are few.

Why is this?

What is understood—what do I understand—by “theory of technique”? I think it responds to the curiosity, or the need, to understand more thoroughly what we are doing, often as artisans (this word is not an insult).

To be able to explain, to ourselves and to others, the purpose of our actions, what our goals are, and what instruments we plan to use. (Baranger 1997)¹

Tied to Madé's comments, I would like to mention that for me, psychoanalytic concepts operate like scaffolding. When you perceive a building, you do not see what its scaffolding might have been. In the construction of a psychoanalytic text, too, it is difficult to determine what conceptual scaffolding formed the foundation of the work. I offer testimony that Barangerian concepts have operated and continue to operate in my writing and in my personal life as scaffolding and as sources that sustain and nourish my feeling and my thought.

Analytic field theory

I consider that the Barangerian concepts of analytic field, bastion, parasitism, and second look challenge the analyst's commitment in the analytic process.

As Madé said,

The field is a structure different from the sum of its components, just as a melody is different from a sum of its notes. The advantage of being able to think in terms of a field is that the dynamics of the analytic situation inevitably encounter many stumbling blocks which are not due to the patient's or the analyst's resistance but reveal the existence of a pathology specific to this structure. (Baranger 1993, 16)

The concept of field in the intersubjective dimension, formulated by Madelaine and Willy Baranger, is a macro-concept—an eloquent manifestation of complex thought.

Unlike other conceptions of field in the theory of technique in the analytic situation, the Barangers’ field is characterised by the presence of what they term the basic unconscious fantasy in the intersubjective dynamic: an original and recursive structure supporting the members, upon which transference and countertransference are structured.

This fantasy is a shared and original fantasmatic assemblage based on the history, identifications, and traumas of both participants—that is, of both the analysand and the analyst—and by creating this third object-fantasy, a product of the collusion of several fantasies, it commands the dynamics of the relationship in its unconscious aspects. The basic unconscious fantasy translates and produces.

Its impacts are felt and its expression becomes visible in the analytic process or non-process when the mobility of the ideational and/or affective content in the intersubjective dynamic is lost, leading to the development of a bastion as an adventitious structure, or, in its extreme manifestation, parasitism.

The elucidation of the basic unconscious fantasy requires complex and detailed work on the part of the analyst. That is, the concept of field requires a second look by the analyst, broadly aimed at dismantling this fantasmatic assemblage in the intersubjective dynamic and then identifying, to the extent possible, the analyst's intrasubjective history in order to reveal which poorly bound pages of his or her own history might have “gotten mixed up” with other poorly bound pages of the other, and in this collusion between the unconscious fantasies, identifications, myths, and pacts of the two, ultimately shaped a shared fantasmatic assemblage, with each in his or her stereotyped, repetitive role.

I believe that “starting from this field unconscious fantasy, the psychical functioning and the intra-subjective history of each of the members can begin to be unravelled. From intersubjectivity to intrasubjectivity. From ‘hic et nunc’ to the past and the future. From this apparently atemporal precipitate to the temporality of resignification” (Kancyper 2009, 87).

The concept of field has thus become a macro-concept in complex thought, a crucial site of questioning, tying itself into the Gordian knot of the relationship between the intrapsychic, the intersubjective, and the transubjective.

Morin (2008, 48) holds that “we need macro-concepts. Just as an atom is a constellation of particles, just as the solar system is a constellation around a star, in the same say we need to think in terms of constellations and the solidarity of concepts.” He also suggests that complexity does not lead to the elimination of simplicity. “It integrates, as far as possible, the simplifying ways of thinking, but it rejects the mutilating, reductionist, one-dimensional and ultimately blinding consequences of a simplification deemed a reflection of what could be real in reality” (1990, 22; translator's own translation).

In my opinion,

the fruitfulness of [the Barangers’ concept of field] opens up new paths: the advent of oneness, correlative to the consolidation of otherness; it allows the revision of the individual's own history as well as the other's, and the admission of points of similarity, difference and complementarity between participants. (Kancyper 2009, 88)

I would also like to note that this Barangerian concept of field and the basic fantasy that commands the unconscious aspects of the relationship in the intersubjective dynamic can create several obstacles and awaken resistance in the analyst.

Indeed, as I have written elsewhere,

this concept inflicts a new wound upon the analyst's narcissism and power because he loses once again the illusion of omnipotence and self-sufficiency. In the relationship with the other and with others, the fantasy created in and because of the field situation “spreads its wings,” it is autonomous and exercises its own influence over the individuals, like the unconscious which has its own laws and psychodynamics independent of rational and conscious control. (Kancyper 2009, 87)

At the same time,

accepting the presence of this concept in every stable and long-lasting relationship demands the inevitable assumption of complex and extra work. The analyst cannot go on maintaining his position as a passive observer of a situation that is unfairly alienating and frustrating him, rather, he is required to shift his position. Through his own psychical functioning, conditioned by his own complemental series, the analyst too has a part, in asymmetrical degrees, in the outcome of the relationship's trophic or destructive destinies.

The extra psychical work imposes the relinquishing of an automatic tendency to place in others the torrent of projections and projective identifications, or, onto oneself, the massive return of these, in order to admit that, in the end, each of the participants of the field has a part in the production of the intersubjective fantasy, which, furthermore, is original and originated by that particular field situation. (Kancyper 2009, 88)

The final point I would like to mention is this: while this concept of field in the theory of technique arose for the analysis of adults, it is also fundamental to apply it to analysis with children and adolescents.

However, the analytic field with children and adolescents is compounded by the effects that arise from the tripod made up of the parents, the analysand, and the analyst, the latter of whom must maintain a broader interpretation than what he or she would apply in the analytic process with adults. This is because the analyst must include the effects of the parents’ unconscious fantasies on determining and creating the basic unconscious fantasy of the field.

In 2000, Madé Baranger wrote a text titled “Creativity in Training” [La creatividad en la formación], which gave visibility and voice to her ethical position on the complex dynamics of psychoanalytic institutions. I shall transcribe a few paragraphs that I consider noteworthy:²

(a) All teaching, beyond transmitting acquired knowledge—“what should be known”—should stimulate the capacity to think, and more than offer certainties and solutions, it should promote doubts and questioning, inciting debate. To achieve this, there is nothing better than knowledge of other theories and how they compare to the institution's theories (if it has any). This makes it possible to refine and problematise one's own thought, reflecting upon the field of psychoanalysis itself. Even those theoretical attempts in the history of psychoanalysis that were subsequently discarded should be examined and discussed again as a valuable thought exercise, and this may lead to some element being rescued and becoming newly relevant for current perspectives of analysis.

(b) Members’ advancement in their careers should be determined by their creativity, or at least by their scientific ability, and not by their adherence to the ideology, theoretical or otherwise, of the political group in charge/power or of greatest prestige. The priority must return to thought and the pursuit of truth.

The realisation of this ideal demands both ethics and the possibility of analysing the narcissism of the institutions’ leaders and members as well as that of the candidates, so that creative potential cannot be smothered by the temptations of power. The analytic task may thus regain the sense of a true sublimation, ever exposed and vulnerable to the shock of discoveries, of surprise, and to the pain of losing what was thought to have been possessed and understood.

The institution's contribution to creativity consists of ensuring its operations and regulations are organised, being mindful of the need for freedom and respect for individualities, and at the same time, seeking and promoting ongoing forms of training at every level. (Baranger 2000)

Before I finish, I would like to share a comment Madé made when she returned from a trip to Paris at 90 years of age, and my response at a conference organised by the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association dedicated to her thought and to her work.

You know how unjust the passage of time is. Not so much because of the wrinkles, which are a gain, but because of the loss of stature. Suddenly I want to grab a book from my bookshelf and I can't reach it. I’m losing height.

I do not doubt, Madé, that this inexorable reality is not at all gratifying, but nor do I hesitate to tell you that you have not lost even one centimetre of your scientific stature or your love for the transmission of psychoanalysis.

A contemporary of yours, Ingmar Bergman, commented that for him, old age is like climbing a mountain. “The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your views become more extensive.” I believe that in you, Madé, the passage and weight of the years has not only broadened your vision, but it has also increased the weight of your conviction in the transformative action of psychoanalysis and its galvanising and liberating effects on individual and social psychology.

Everyone here today stands with you to join you, with joy, in climbing the mountain of your incessant enthusiasms.

Notes

1 Translated from the original Spanish for this publication.

2 Translated from the original Spanish for this publication.