‘Laura’ falling down: Comments and fantasies about Jacques André’s essay

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Notes

1. The author wishes to acknowledge Thomas Ogden and members of his Friday morning seminar who have influenced this approach to listening (and reading) case material.

2. 18th century scholars argued that she was Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade (Musa, in Petrarch, 1996, pp. xvii–xviii).

3. J. L. Austin, the British philosopher of language, coined this term. See Austin (1981), How to Do Things With Words.

4. In a prior communication, Présent, passé, conditionnel (André, 2004. pp. 95–91), André discusses a case similar to Laura’s, that of Noemie, who cannot differentiate between past and present. In the English version of this case (André, 2006), the patient is named Amalia who is a composite of Noémie and another patient Elsa.

5. This is a play on a citation from André (2006, p. 260).