Élisabeth Roudinesco Biography

Élisabeth Roudinesco uniquely combines the precision of a historian with the insight of a practitioner to vividly portray the doctrines, figures, and personalities that have embodied a revolution of the soul in France. She singularly contextualizes the theories, movements, and debates that have continuously animated the French psychoanalytic landscape since 1885. Her work traces this trajectory from the arrival of Freud in Paris to attend Charcot's lectures at the Salpêtrière, through the extraordinary Lacanian adventure, and up to the recent questioning of psychoanalytic therapies.