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l'Information Psychiatrique. Volume 83, Number 1, 55-61, Janvier 2007, À propos de…

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Author(s) : Patrice Belzeaux

Summary : The place of psychoanalysis in the psychiatric studies of Henri EyA re-edition of Henri Ey’s “Etudes psychiatriques”, first published between 1948 and 1954, has provided the opportunity to review Henri Ey’s relationship with psychoanalysis. An attentive rereading of his works reveals that Henri Ey, far from being an opponent of psychoanalysis as is generally thought, was in fact an active supporter (on condition that it did not try to dominate any other approach). His interest even led him to recommend it being practiced by all psychiatrists wishing to deepen their psychopathological knowledge. But, while he did not always accept the primal, linear causality espoused by psychoanalysis, in which meaning produces cause, it is astonishing to note that, until the end of his life, his interest in more archaic conflicts of the psyche such as described by M. Klein, did not wane. He appreciated the benefit of psychoanalysis when dealing with serious neuroses and psychoses. It is in this context that, in a posthumous work, he admitted his regret at not having worked through C.G.Jung’s work with more determination for the light it shed on the primordial birth of symbols and the question of the “originary” before all sexuality. To conclude, we defend the thesis that the organodynamic theory of H. Ey, deployed in time and not in the space of the brain, was, in the semantic articulation of his discourse, a metaphorical “fiction” which paved the way for a possible treatment for psychosis.

Keywords : organodynamism, psychic causality, psychoanalysis of psychoses, originary, metaphor, fiction