Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel (1928 – March 5, 2006) (whose surname is alternatively spelled Chasseguet-Smirguel, but generally not in English-language publications) was a leading French psychoanalyst, a training analyst, and past President of the Société psychanalytique de Paris in France. From 1983 to 1989, she was Vice President of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Chasseguet-Smirgel was Freud Professor at the University College, London, and Professor of Psychopathology at the Université Lille Nord de France. She is best known for her reworking of the Freudian theory of the ego ideal and its connection to primary narcissism, as well as for her extension of this theory to a critique of utopian ideology.

Biography and career Chasseguet-Smirgel was born in Paris in 1928; as a Jew of Central European ancestry, she lost many relatives in the Holocaust. She became a psychoanalyst, then carried out further studies in political science and eventually earned a doctorate in psychology. Like many other young French intellectuals, she broke with the Communist Party after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

Psychoanalytical critic of the French students' rebellion in 1968

By the time of the student rebellions of May 1968, she had become a political conservative. In their anonymous 1969 book L'univers contestationnaire (reworked and published in English in 1986 as Freud or Reich? Psychoanalysis and Illusion), Chasseguet-Smirgel and her husband and co-author Béla Grunberger argued that the utopian political ideology of the student demonstrators, as well as of their Freudo-Marxist avatars Herbert Marcuse and Gilles Deleuze, was fueled by primary narcissism, the desire to return to the maternal womb. Further, that the very term "Freudo-Marxism" was oxymoronic—one could not reconcile the reality principle with the Communist utopia. Chasseguet-Smirgel's analysis of the views of the Freudian dissident Wilhelm Reich, who attempted a systematization of the libido, posits an explanation of why his orgone theory collected followers despite its apparent pseudoscientific character.

As in many cases of paranoia, the coherent and systematic appearance of ideas is a symptom which allows the subject to function in an apparently normal way. The internal necessity that forces paranoiacs to persuade others as to the reality of their system of belief results in their 'recruiting' converts. These disciples will tend to be seduced by the paranoiac's ideas in so far as these deny reality and mobilize Illusion; an illusion which will be backed by manic rationalization. (Freud or Reich?, page 109)

Notably, Lacan mentioned this book with great disdain. While Grunberger and Chasseguet-Smirgel were still cloaked by the pseudonym, Lacan remarked that for sure none of the authors belonged to his school, as none would stoop to such a low drivel.

In November 1968, Grunberger and Chasseguet-Smirgel, both members of the Paris section of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPa), disguised themselves under the pseudonym André Stéphane and published L’univers Contestationnaire. In this book they assumed that the left-wing rioters of May 68 were totalitarian stalinists, and psychoanalyzed them saying that they were affected by a sordid infantilism caught up in an Oedipal revolt against the Father.

Notably Lacan, mentioned this book with great disdain. While Grunberger and Chasseguet-Smirgel were still disguised under the pseudonym, Lacan remarked that for sure none of the authors belonged to his school, as none would abase themselves to such low drivel. The two IPa analysts responded accusing the Lacan School of "intellectual terrorism".

Chasseguet-Smirgel was referenced in American artist Mike Kelley catalogue for his exhibition, "Mike Kelley: The Uncanny" at Tate Liverpool. This exhibition featured Andy Warhol's Andy Warhol Robot.