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selves. Each group has to defend and define its own identity. The
people who are in their forties , however, don't conform. They meet
with "outsiders" and borrow their techniques.
EK:
Now that you are so involved with psychoanalysis, do you think
less of politics? Where do you stand politically? Do you support
Mitterrand and the Socialist Party? Tell me a little about that .
JK:
You may be right. I am less involved in practical politics , be–
cause I think that I now can be more useful as a psychoanalyst. I no
longer need to add an
engagement
to my intellectual work , because
psychoanalysis itself is an
engagement.
But this doesn't prevent me
from having political opinions. I don't involve myself so much in
politics , because to some extent this would be against psychoanalytic
ethics . I do not want to be too visible on the political scene, to be too
much of a public person. I want to preserve a sort of neutral and
more enigmatic personality, because this is the only way to work
with a patient's unconscious . For if they think of you as rightist or
leftist, or as something else, their own freedom , I think, may be
blocked .
EK:
Yes. But even if you don't appear in public or on television , I
assume you do have your own politics. Do you discuss politics with
friends?
JK:
Yes, of course. I have personal opinions and positions . I also
discuss political problems with my students in the university . But
this runs parallel to psychoanalytic practice, and thus presupposes
more reservation than political work. Thus political discussions re–
main for me separate from psychoanalysis.
EK:
I would assume , maybe I'm wrong, that you must have been
pleased when Mitterrand got in. But by now, almost none of the in–
tellectuals any longer support him.
JK:
No, they don't.
EK:
How do
you
explain that, and what is your sense of this situa–
tion? How have you been making this transition?
JK:
My experience , I believe, was particular. As you know , I lived
with socialism in Bulgaria, and cannot in this sense be considered a
French intellectual. Some of the latter were quite enthusiastic when
Mitterrand took over the government. I thought, in the Western
countries we already have a utopian socialism. I hoped he would not
destroy this utopia, because when you try to realize a utopia it usu–
ally dies. I was persuaded from the beginning that it would be a
failure .. . .
EK:
When you say socialism, you mean socialism or democracy?
