The Pathology of Democracy: A Letter to Bernard Accoyer and to Enlightened Opinion - JLS Supplement (Ex-tensions)

Bernard Burgoyne · Russell Grigg · Jacques-Alain Miller

Jan 2005 · Karnac Books

About this ebook

On Wednesday 8 October 2003, the French National Assembly passed a bill intended to regulate, for the first time, the practice of psychotherapy in France. Moved by Bernard Accoyer, the purpose of the legislation was to restrict the practice of psychotherapy to psychiatrists and clinical psychologists; it would effectively no longer be legal for any other practitioners, including psychoanalysts, to practice in the sphere of mental health. This volume contains Jacques-Alain Miller's letter to Bernard Accoyer, opposing the bill. Contributions from Bernard Burgoyne and Russell Grigg are also included, examining the implications of such a bill for France and for elsewhere.

About the author

Bernard Burgoyne is a psychoanalyst practising in London. He is a Member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, and a founder member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and the University of Paris, and is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalysis in the Institute for Health and Social Science Research at Middlesex University. He has published extensively on questions of structure in psychoanalysis, and is particularly concerned with the way in which the predicaments of human interactions are resolvable only by a consideration of the frontiers of desire and the texture of space.

Russell Grigg lectures in philosophy and is the co-ordinator of psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University, Australia. Dr Grigg has a PhD in psychoanalysis and has published extensively on psychoanalysis. He is also known for his translations of the seminars of Jacques Lacan. He is currently a psychoanalyst in private practice.