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those due to the emotional remnants of his early Catholicism.
Althusser begins the memoir by stating that the precise memory of
that unforgettable November morning is forever engraved in his mind.
It
is a sort of
plaidoyer,
as well as explanation, wish for expiation, and psy–
choanalytic inquiry into his tortured psyche. His insights into his love and
life with Helene are replete with self-accusations, with reproaches to
friends who saw her only as a difficult and abrasive person, as the older
woman who induced him to join the Communist Party, who kept
dominating him. He asserts throughout that this is far from true, that his
victim loved him, helped him and made him emotionally whole, al–
though he recounts the many difficulties in their relationship which
could have led those who knew them as a couple to come away with
the impression that she was a shrew. When they met, in 1946, they
"were two extremely lonely people, both in the depths of despair. ..
[and] kindred spirits, sharing the same sense of anguish, of suffering, of
loneliness, and the same desperate longing." They also were poor.
Althusser recounts that he was extremely unfaithful, that he flaunted his
infidelities, made advances in front of Helene, and often invited his mis–
tresses to meet her. Yet even though they had many fights over these
matters, she always forgave him. A few paragraphs later, he recalls, lov–
ingly , their courtship: "How cheerful and proud I was listening
to
the
sound of my footsteps echoing down the deserted rue Saint-Jacques
[after visiting her] .... I would not have changed my supreme good
fortune, my treasure, my love, my joy, for anything in the world." One
is left to wonder about these mood swings and about whether his friends
fclt they had to protect him from such swings or from Helene who, he
states, "was infinitely superior to me and did me a favour by introducing
me to a world (of communism) I did not know." But he had "phases of
violent arguments with his analyst as well, especially aroLlnd 1976-77,"
the period that coincides with his writing of
The Facts
and of his
Essays
in Self-Criticism;
when he apparently revolted against Party discipline .
Althusser does not introduce philosophy, politics and his position
within the Party until page 160 of the book . And then he does so par–
enthetically, with much emphasis on his student experiences with
Bachelard, Desanti, Merleau-Ponty and many other luminaries among the
French intellectual elite at the Ecole Normale.
In
this" 'womblike'
place, [he] felt warm and at home and was protected from the outside
world." His doctor and psychiatrist were nearby, and so were such stu–
dents as Etienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, Regis Debray, Robert Linhart
and Dominique Lecourt - all names we are familiar with from the neo–
Althusserian works they wrote. He mentions having been influenced by
