Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, a professor of comparative literature and French, delves into the history and philosophy of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and hypnosis. His work offers a constructivist analysis of how psychological 'facts' are co-produced, emphasizing the accuracy of historical accounts of mental disorders. He is recognized for his participation in intense debates surrounding psychoanalysis, known as the Freud Wars. Borch-Jacobsen is a provocative thinker, known for challenging established narratives within the field.
Remembering Anna O. offers a devastating examination of the very foundations of psychanalytic theory and practice, which was born with an essay on the case of Anna O., a young woman afflicted with a severe hysteria. Borch-Jacobsen maintains that the cure of Anna O. is a myth and suggests that her symptoms were simulated to meet her doctor's expectations. This book reads like a scholarly thriller and has already created a sensation in France.
Who is `I'? How does a subject or self emerge in Freud's theory? To what does the repressed return? In original and lucid readings of key Freudian texts, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen argues that the constitution of an `I' at once carries the subject beyond himself to the other; there is no self that is not originally identification with the other. This argument has significant ramifications for various central issues in psychoanalysis: the relation between identification and desire, between desire and violence, and between identification and object relations. It leads to a more ominous reading of Freud by showing that the two types of ties Freud postulated in the Oedipal triangle - object love and identification (the first conceivably less linked to narcissism than the second) - are in fact one. The book should interest not only literature and philosophy specialists concerned with psychoanalytic theory but the psychoanalytic community as well.