JULIA KRISTEVA
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to analytic listening.
It
seems to me that we are surrounded by a sea of
distressed persons, but they are given no representation. They are not
represented where true power resides - beyond politicians, who have less
and less, and of course beyond intellectuals, who have none .
Psychoanalysis is indeed a privileged listening post, but one should invent
and diversify listening posts in order to compensate for the general
deficiency of the symbolic markers we are talking about. Consequently,
the analyses we are able to produce, that I produce for my part on the ba–
sis of my clinical experience, could be put to practical use, doubtless not
by media intellectuals, the stars of the system, but by those I might call
"basic intellectuals," those who play their parts in educational centers,
schools, mayors' offices, and new microspaces that need to be opened, to
be invented. It is in that direction that one should give a concrete exten–
sion to the ethics oflistening, an ethics which would be different from the
militant ethics resting on a deceitful discourse.
BS: What precise place do you allot to psychoanalysis in that sphere, and,
as you see it, what is the status of the psychoanalytic movement?
JK: One hears people say that psychoanalysis is dead, and in some ways
they are not completely wrong. Many psychoanalysts and analytical soci–
eties are in the process of self-destructing, both in the guise of a too-dog–
matic obedience to the letter of Freud's text and of sectarian splinterings
around the remains of Lacan. In spite of that, however, there exists a liv–
ing, fruitful psychoanalytic discourse, and such a discourse is aware of
unavoidably competing and conflicting with two contemporary trends.
The first of these is inflated media growth; one now witnesses a takeover
of the analytic language by the media, with all this implies in psychic lazi–
ness, fleeting narcissistic mirages; at the same time there is a careful
shunting aside of the reality of suffering and the necessity to confront such
suffering with a full knowledge of the facts.
The other trend is the inflated growth of the neurosciences. One
should not of course reject the knowledge gained from those sciences;
one must learn to work with them. But it is absolutely appropriate to re–
sist some of the things that have been propagated, such as the pharma–
ceutical bombardment of individuals to the extent that their individual re–
sponsibility is taken away. Everything concerning the "soul" is being ig–
nored, and by "soul" I mean that psychic space whose protection and
creativity lie at the heart of Freudian thought. This is where psychoanal–
ysis appears to me to still play a part today, involving both resistance and
awakening, and in protecting culture or what is left of it.
BS: We have spoken of the intellectual and his role without directly
