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Jacques Lacan Articles From Le Minotaure The Problem of Style and The Psychiatric Conception of Paranoiac Forms of Experience and Motives of Paranoic Crime The Crime of The Papin Sisters 1
Jacques Lacan Articles From Le Minotaure The Problem of Style and The Psychiatric Conception of Paranoiac Forms of Experience and Motives of Paranoic Crime The Crime of The Papin Sisters 1
Features
A rticles from Le M inotaure:
“The Problem of Style and the Psychiatric C onception of P aranoiac
Form s o f Experience”
“M otives o f Paranoiac C rim e: The C rim e of the Papin Sisters”
by Jacques Lacan 1
Reviews
D.A. M iller. The Novel and the Police
Lawrence Rothfield 30
John O’Brian, ed. Clem ent G reenberg: The Collected Essays and C riticism
Ann Reynolds 41
Books Received 60
normal— all those stupid symbols. If that is the ered the sisters sufficiently sane to be held responsi
only Russian left, I will fall in love with the
ble for their crim es, but Christine’s subsequent epi
French proletariat. The best proletariat. Did
you read about that wonderful murder in Le sodes of delirium in prison (upon being separated
Mans last week? What those two servant girls from her sister) forced the authorities to commute
did impressed me more than the latest bulletins their death sentence to life internment in the asylum.
from Moscow. They had been exploited from Lacan’s hero, Doctor Logre, was the notable excep
childhood on—orphans to begin with, or some
tion here; he perceptively recognized their mental in
thing like that—and at a given moment they at
tacked their mistresses. After some remark capacity and thus provided Lacan with the basis for a
from her employer, the older girl smashed the novel interpretation of the sisters’ condition.
skull of the employer with a pewter pot, while As a case history, Lacan’s analysis of the Papin
the other, a docile creature with a timid little sisters has a peculiar status, since it is not based on
face, stopped the other woman on the stairs.
clinical observation, as Lacan him self admits. Like
Then they proceeded to slaughter the two bour
geois women, with their nails. Twenty years of Poe’s Dupin, who reaches his most important conclu
loyal services preceded all this. And in no way sions through an astute analysis of the newspaper ac
were these employers more loathsome than any count of the murders in the Rue Morgue,3 Lacan is
others. They only happened to symbolize at the indebted to Paris-Soir’s coverage o f the trial and
moment the full twenty years of service. So
particularly to Doctor L ogic's testimony, which
they were beaten to a pulp with the pewter pot.
Their eyes were ripped out and hurled across sought to discover the irrational bases of the sisters’
the landing. Imagine the girls*s [sic] heavenly behavior. Logre’s salient contribution to an under
exhaustion when they went to bed afterwards, standing of the sisters’ motivation was his recogni
in the same house, just as they had done every tion that their close relationship constituted a cause;
other evening. And they never slept so bliss
in his words, they formed a “psychological couple.”
fully. And now that they are standing trial,
they maintain their roles so well that the bour Lacan seized on this notion in part because it pro
geois press has no recourse but to proclaim vided a more profound understanding of the nature of
them insane. Nobody understands anything their relationship than that which was given in the
about it in Le Mans: why precisely those two papers: theirs was not a mere tawdry incest (as had
sweet and respectable women? And that poor
been alleged), but the result of a repressed homosex
husband! He is a magistrate, who had been
waiting all evening for his wife and daughter at uality and narcissistic fixation that eventually led to
another magistrate’s house. The older sister their abortive attempt to tear themselves free of each
answers every question with “We got ’em other. Yet Logre’s happy phrase also gave Lacan an
good.’’ The younger one cries when she hears inkling o f the workings o f the mirror stage.
the fatherly voice of the judge but doesn’t for a
Lacan’s article is important in light of the subse
moment lose her trust in the older sister, who
has a face like a flatiron and who only shows quent development of his thought because it provides
her eyelids. I would like to make a picture of an early instance o f his theory o f the m inor stage,
them and distribute it as a supplement to L'Hu which he eventually worked out and presented to the
manité. Not because that paper deserves it, but International Congress o f Psychoanalysis in 1936. In
to give truly revolutionary minds something
Anika Lemaire’s words:
else besides the symbols of Soviet religion.2
2
Introduction
the mirror stage is the advent of coenaesthetic tragic irony, since Christine and Léa w o e in effect
subjectivity preceded tty the feeling that one’s trying to kill off the ideal image o f the self that each
body is in pieces. The reflection of the body is,
then, salutary in that it is unitary and localized
constituted for the other; and though they did succeed
in time and space. But the mirror stage is also in killing off two women, Christine for one was con
the stage of alienating narcissistic identification demned to repeat this morbid exorcism in prison.
(primary identification); the subject is his own The terrible sacrifice demanded by their illness
double more than he is himself.4 and the pathos o f their blind groping toward self
knowledge and independence elicit from Lacan his
From experience of the self as a fragmented body, the most impassioned prose. Moreover, he provides a
infant proceeds to its first moment of bodily integra complex analysis o f the case, which involves (among
tion, when it assumes an image which is called the other notable features) an elaboration o f Freud’s
“Ideal-I,” a primordial form o f the / that precedes its ideas on homosexuality and its relation to social in
objectification “in the dialectic of identification with stincts; a recognition o f the vital role that “social ten
the other . . . before language restores to it, in the sions” play in determining psychosis; and a sympa
universal, its function as subject.”** But the infant thetic sense o f the paranoiac’s kinship, developmen-
cannot distinguish between this image and its own tally and linguistically, with the human community of
body; for example, on seeing its playmate fall down, reason. The reader can draw his or her own conclu
the infant will cry. Moreover, if the m irror stage is sions about the significance o f Lacan’s diagnosis,
not successfully negotiated, the subject will remain whether in relation to other contemporary interpreta
enthralled by this narcissistic identification with the tions, to his own work, or to psychoanalytic thought
image of the self, and the infant’s jubilation at as in general. I present both o f these articles because
suming a spectral control of itself will modulate into they are o f interest not only to the professional psy
the moumfiil echoes of lost'opportunities for love or choanalyst, but also to literary theorists, cultural his
possibly into a dirge for the ideal self whose con torians, and feminists, who cannot overlook the fact
strictions eventually precipitate its end in a convulsed that Lacan’s work is founded on the analysis of para
act o f murder. noiac women. The doctor, the detective, and the art
Lacan diagnoses the sisters’ condition as “the ist converge in the singular and rather sphinx-like fig
malady o f being two”: Christine and Léa Papin could ure who delivered these enigmas not to the psycho
not distinguish themselves from one another; they analytic faithful, but to the surrealists, who w oe per
could not recognize the existence o f the Other. When haps most open to the nuances o f Lacan’s interpretive
threatened by a second female couple, they projected license.
their repressed hatred* onto the angry mistresses of My translations are not definitive, nor have they
the household and ritualistically slew them, an act of been commissioned. They are intended solely to in
troduce readers to the early work of Lacan, which is
unavailable in English. I have tried my best to con
4 Anika Lemaire, Jacques Lacan (1970), tram. David vey the literary quality o f Lacan’s prose, its ironies
Macey (London: RKP, 1977) 81. and word-play, its bluntness as well as its indirection,
but his terms occasionally require explanation, and
3 Lacan, “The Mirror Stage a* Formative of the Func
tion of the I at Revealed in Paychoanalytic Experience,”
the resulting notes may impede the reader’s flow.
Ecrits, trana. Alan Sheridan (NY: Norton, 1977) 2. Nevertheless, the difficulties of Lacan’s prose are not
such as the reader might expect, since his style is
* See note 18 in “Motiver of Paranoiac Crime" below rather different from the opaque abstractions of the
for Freud's explanation of the way in which jealousy of
fraternal rivals is repressed and transformed into homo
Ecrits. Finally, I would like to thank Pierre Walker
sexual love. for reading and amending these translations.
The Problem of Style and the Psychiatric Conception of
Paranoiac Forms of Experience1
Among all the problems o f artistic creation, that o f the physical output o f human la b a . Nothing, in
o f style demands m ost urgently, and above all for the deed, in the artificial conditions o f the laboratory
artist him self, a theoretical solution. Indeed, there is could contradict such a systematic misconstruction
the not unim portant idea that it is fam ed from the [méconnaissance]2234o f human reality.
conflict, revealed through style, between realistic Such must have been the role o f psychiatrists,
creation founded upon objective knowledge on the which this reality solicits in an otherwise imperious
one hand, and on the other the superior fa c e o f signi fashion, to encounter both the effects o f ethical order
fication, the em inent emotional communicability of in the creative transferences o f desire or of the libido
so-called stylized creation. According to this idea, in and the structural determinations o f noumenal order
effect, the artist conceives o f style as the fruit o f a in the primary forms o f lived experience: that is, to
rational choice, an ethical choice, an arbitrary choice, recognize the dynamic prim ordiality and originality
a better yet a felt necessity whose spontaneousness o f this experience (Erlebnis) in relation to every ob
asserts itself against all control, a else he disengages jectifications of an event {Geschehnis).*
from style through a kind o f negative askesis. It is We would be in the presence o f the most sur
useless to insist upon these conceptions f a the theo prising exception to the laws befitting the develop
retician. ment o f every ideological superstructure, however, if
But it seems to us that the direction taken nowa these facts had been as soon recognized as encoun
days by psychiatric research offers some new data to tered, as soon affirmed as recognized. The anthro
these problems. We have shown the very concrete pology that they imply renders the postulates o f ra
nature of such data in detailed analyses bearing upon tionalizing physics and morals too relative. But these
the writings of the insane. We would like to indicate postulates are sufficiently integrated into current lan
here in necessarily more abstract terms the theoretical guage so that the physician, who among all the types
revolution that they bring to anthropology. o f intellectuals is the most frequently marked by a
Institutional psychology, to be the last advent of slight dialectical backwardness, did not naively be
positivist science and thus to have appeared at the lieve that he rediscovered them in the facts them-
apogee of the bourgeois civilization that sustains the
body of these sciences, could not but pledge a naive
confidence in the mechanistic thought that had dem 2 A very important term in Lacan*« vocabulary,
onstrated its brilliant proofs in the physical sciences which turn« up repeatedly in them article«, and which
«orne leave untranslated. It signifie« either a mir recog
—at least as long as the illusion of an infallible in nition or a misconstruction of reality, which is tied in
vestigation of nature continued to conceal the reality with knowledge, since knowledge (which comes with
of a fabricated second nature, more consistent with the acquisition of language) is both an ordering of expe
rience and a misconstruction of it insofar as it inter
laws o f equivalence fundamental to the mind, namely venes in the child's original connection to fundamental
that o f the machine. Besides, the historical progress biological and physiological processes; it formalizes
o f such a psychology, if it starts from the experi vital individual experience. [Trans.]
selves. Moreover, one shouldn’t fail to recognize jectification. The explored forms o f these structures
[méconnaître] that the interest in mental illnesses allow us to conceive o f them as differentiated by cer
historically was bom from needs of a juridical origin. tain hiatuses that in turn allow us to typify them.
These needs appeared at the time o f the establish Now, certain o f these forms o f lived experience,
ment, formulated as the basis o f law, o f the bourgeois called morbid, appear to be particularly prolific in
philosophical conception o f man as endowed with modes o f symbolic expression, which, as for being ir
absolute moral liberty and with responsibility appro rational in their foundation, are not less furnished
priate to the individual (the link between the Rights with an eminent intentional signification and with a
o f Man and the initiatory researches o f Pinel and Es- very lofty, tensed [tensionnelle] communicability.
quirol). From then on, the main question posed in They are found in the psychoses that we have partic
practice to psychiatric science has been the artificial ularly studied, while preserving their old—and ety
one of an all-or-nothing o f mental breakdown (art. 64 mologically satisfying—label, “paranoia.”
o f the penal Code). These psychoses are manifested clinically by a
It was natural then that psychiatrists at first delirium of persecution, a specific and chronic evo
would borrow the explanation for mental disorders lution, and characteristic crim inal reactions. Unable
from institutional analyses and from the convenient to disclose any disorder in the handling o f logical ap
scheme o f a quantitative deficit (insufficiency or dis paratus and spatio-temporo-causal symbols, authors
equilibrium) o f a function of relation with the world, in the classic line are not afraid paradoxically to
function and world proceeding from the same ab connect all these disorders to an hypertrophy o f the
straction and rationalization. A whole order o f facts, reasoning function.
which answers to the clinical framework of insanity, As for us, we have been able to show not only
allows itself moreover to be sufficiently resolved. that the world characteristic o f these subjects is trans
It is the triumph o f the intuitive genius befitting formed even more in its perception than in its inter
observation, that a Kraepelin, although wholly en pretation, but that this very perception is not compa
gaged in these theoretical prejudices, was able to rable with die intuition o f objects characteristic o f the
classify, with a rigor to which we have scarcely average civilized person. Indeed, on the one hand the
added, the clinical species whose enigma, through field of perception is stamped for these subjects with
often bastard approximations (of which the public re a character, both immanent and imminent, o f “per
tained only some rallying words: schizophrenia, etc.), sonal signification” (the symptom called “interpreta
had to engender the unequaled noumenal relativism tion”), and this character is exclusive of the affective
for the so-called phenomenological viewpoints of neutrality o f the object that at least virtually demands
contemporary psychiatry. rational knowledge. On the other hand, the alter
These clinical species are nothing other than psy ation, notable among them, o f spatio-temporal intu
choses, properly speaking (what the vulgar call “real itions modifies the scope o f the conviction o f reality
kooks“). But the phenomenologically inspired labors (illusions o f memory, delirious beliefs).
on these mental states (for example the most recent These fundamental traits o f paranoiac lived ex
work o f Ludwig Binswanger on the state called perience exclude it from ethico-rational deliberation
“flight o f ideas” that one observes in the manic- and from all phenomenologically definable liberty in
depressive psychosis, or my own work on Paranoiac imaginative creation.
Psychosis in Relation to Personality) do not leave But we have methodically studied the symbolic
aside the local reaction, which is the most often re expressions of their experience that these subjects
marked only through some pragmatic discordance, give: on the one hand these are the ideational [idéi-
specifiable as mental disorder, of the totality of the ques]5 themes and significant acts o f their delirium,
patient’s lived experience, which such work tries to on the other hand, the plastic and poetic productions
define in its originality. This experience can be of which they are very prolific.
grasped only at the lim it o f an effort at consent; it can We have been able to show:
be validly described as the coherent structure of an 1. The eminently human signification of these
immediate noumenal apprehension of oneself and of symbols, which has an analogue, as to the delirious
the world. Only an analytic method o f extreme rigor themes, only in the mythic creations of folklore, and.
can permit such a description; all objectification is
indeed eminently precarious in a phenomenal order
that manifests itself as anterior to rationalizing ob 5 Lacan uses this unusual coinage as a mote value-
neutral term than "id éa l" [Trans.]
Critical Texts 53
as to the animating feelings o f fantasies, is not often All these traits characteristic o f paranoiac lived
unequal to the inspiration of the greatest artists (feel experience leave it a margin o f human communica
ings o f nature, idyllic and utopian feelings o f human bility, where it has shown, under other civilizations,
ity, feelings o f antisocial demand). all its force. Yet hasn’t it lost its force und»1 our
2. We have characterized in the symbols a funda rationalizing civilization? One can assert that Rous
mental tendency that we have designated by the term, seau, on whom the diagnosis o f typical paranoia can
“iterative identification of the object”: delirium be pronounced with the greatest certitude, owes to his
indeed reveals itself to be very prolific in fantasms of characteristically morbid experience the fascination
cyclic repetition, o f ubiquitous multiplication, of that he exercised on his age through his person and
endless periodic returns o f the same events, of the his style. Let us also bear in mind that the criminal
same persons doubled or tripled, and sometimes in gesture o f paranoiacs sometimes stirs up tragic sym
hallucinations duplicating the subject’s person. pathy so much that the age, to defend itself, no longer
These intuitions are manifestly akin to very constant knows whether to strip such a gesture o f its human
processes o f poetic creation and seem one o f the con value or else to crush the guilty under its respon
ditions o f typification, which creates style. sibility.
3. But the m ost remarkable point that we have One can conceive of paranoiac lived experience
made out in the symbols engendered by psychosis is and the conception o f the world that it engenders as
that their value as reality is in no way diminished by an original syntax, which contributes to affirming,
the genesis that excludes them from the mental com through its peculiar links o f comprehension, the hu
munity o f reason. Deliria, indeed, have no need of man community. Knowledge o f this syntax seems to
any interpretation to express, by means of their us an indispensable introduction to comprehending
themes alone, and wonderfully so, these instinctive the symbolic values o f art, and especially to the
and social complexes that psychoanalysis has the problems o f style—namely, to art’s virtues of con
greatest difficulty bringing to light among neurotics. viction and o f human communion, no less than to the
It is no less remarkable that the murderous reactions paradoxes o f its genesis—problems forever insoluble
o f these patients occur quite frequently in a nerve- to any anthropology that is not liberated from the
center o f historically real social tensions. naive realism o f the object.
6
Motives of Paranoiac Crime:
The Crime of the Papin Sisters12
2 Cf. the reports by Jérome and Jean Tharaud in 4 This exclamation—richly ironic and punning (as is
Paris-Soir, September 29 and 30, and October 8, 1933. the case with much of Lacan’s own language in this ar
[Lacan’s note] ticle), particularly in the use of propre in its connota
tions of “propriety” and “cleanliness”—is often used in
3 Lacan fails to clarify that Christine is the older and reaction to scandal, a mixture of “W ouldn't you know!”
Léa the younger sister. [Trans.] with “There’s decency for you!” [Trans.]
7
Critical Texts 53
agitation, with terrifying hallucinations. In the pretation; delirium is considered here as a rational
course o f another fît, she tried to tear out her eyes, in effort o f the subject to explicate its experiences, and
vain but not without injuring them. This time the fu the crim inal act, as a passionate reaction the motives
rious fit necessitated the use of a straitjacket; she of which are given with delirious conviction.3
indulged in erotic exhibitions, and then symptoms of Although the so-called elementary phenomena
melancholy appeared: depression, refusal to eat, self- have a much more certain existence than the alleged
accusation, expiatory acts of a repugnant character, paranoiac constitution, we can easily see the insuffi
afterwards, she had several recurrences o f delirious ciency o f these two conceptions, and we have tried to
discourse. Christine’s declaration that she simulated found a new one upon an observation more consistent
such states can in no way be taken as the real key to with the behavior o f the patient67*
her nature: this playfulness was frequently evinced We have thus recognized, as much in the ele
by the subject, without her behavior being less typi ments as in the ensemble o f delirium and in its reac
cally morbid. tions, the primordial influence o f incidental social
On September 30 the sisters were condemned by relations on each o f these three orders o f phenomena;
the jury. Christine, hearing that she would have her and we have granted as an explanation of the facts of
head cut off in the square at Le Mans, received the psychosis the dynamic notion of social tensions,
news on her knees. whose state o f equilibrium or of rupture normally de
Yet the characteristics of the crime, Christine’s fines the individual’s personality.
disorders in prison, and the eccentric lives o f the sis The aggressive drive, which resolves itself in
ters convinced the majority of psychiatrists of the murder, thus appears to be the malady that serves as
m urderesses’ lack of responsibility. the foundation o f psychosis. We can call the drive
In the face of a counter-expert’s refusal. Doctor unconscious, signifying that the intentional content
Logre, whom people knew to be a highly qualified which translates it into the conscious mind cannot
person, felt able to testify at the bar in their defense. manifest itself without a compromise with the social
Was it the principle o f rigor inherent in a magisterial demands integrated by the subject, that is to say,
clinician or the discretion imposed by the circumstan without a camouflage o f motives, which is quite pre
ces that placed him in the role of advocate? Doctor cisely delirium.
Logre advanced not one but several hypotheses on But this drive is itself stamped with social rela
the presumed mental abnormality o f the sisters: no tivity: it always has a criminal intentionality, alm ost
tions of persecution, sexual perversion, epilepsy or always that of vengeance; often the sense of a pun
hystero-epilepsy. If we feel capable of formulating a ishment, that is to say, of a sanction sprung from so
more univocal solution to the problem, we want first cial ideas; and sometimes at last it identifies itself in
to render homage to his authority, not only because it the finished act o f morality, having the import o f an
covers us with reproach for making a diagnosis with expiation (self-punishment). The objective character
out having ourselves examined the patients, but be istics of murder, its electivity? as to the victim, its
cause it has sanctioned with particularly happy murderous efficiency, its modes o f inducement and
phrases certain facts that are very tricky to isolate, execution vary continuously with the degrees o f hu
and nevertheless essential, as we will see, to the dem man signification of the fundamental drive. These
onstration of our thesis. same degrees command the reaction o f society in re
gard to paranoiac crime, an ambivalent reaction in
Paranoia is a morbid entity which, despite the di dual form, which produces the emotional contagion
verse fortunes it has undergone with the evolution of
psychiatry, answers on the whole to the following
classic traits: a) a mental delirium that varies its
themes from ideas o f grandeur to ideas of persecu
6 Lacan h e n it able to pun on the different meanings
tion; b) aggressive reactions, very frequently murder of “conviction,” in the sense of being convinced of
ous; c) a chronic evolution. something, and of convicting oneself of a crime.
So far two conceptions are opposed as to the [Trans.]
of the crim e and the punitive demands o f public crime for a complement to the clinical picture: if only
opinion. we knew we could find it, principally in the testi
Such is the crime o f the Papin sisters, through mony o f the central com m ission«’o f the village. His
the emotion that it excites and that exceeds its horror, vagueness can in no way disqualify his testimony:
and through its value as an atrocious but symbolic every psychiatrist knows the very special atmosphere
image, even in its most hideous details: the most that is so often evoked by whatever stereotypici > dis
commonplace metaphors of hatred—“I’ll tear her course these patients utter, even before they express
eyes out”—receive their literal execution. Popular themselves in delirious phrases. Let someone test
thinking reveals the meaning that it gives to this ha this impression just once, and it would be impossible
tred by applying here the maximum penalty, like an for him to disregard the fact that he recognizes it.
tique law regarding the crime o f slaves. Perhaps then But then, the booking and interrogation that goes on
we will see that it is mistaken about the real meaning at police stations habituates one to this experience.
o f the act. But let’s observe, in the habit o f those In prison Christine expressed several delirious
frightened by the psychological course we embark themes. Thus we name not only the typical symp
upon in the study o f responsibility, that the adage, “to toms o f delirium , such as the systematic misconstruc
understand is to forgive,”***12is subject to the lim its of tion [méconnaissance] o f reality (Christine asked
each human community and that outside of these lim how her two victims were and declared that she be
its, to understand (or to think one understands) is to lieved they had returned in another body), but also
condemn. the more ambiguous beliefs that translate into state
The intellectual content of delirium appears to ments like this one: “I really think that in another life
us, as we have said, to be a superstructure that at the I must have been my sister’s husband.” One can in
same time justifies and repudiates the criminal drive. deed recognize in these statements the very typical
We conceive o f it then as being subject to variations contents o f classified deliria. Moreover, one con
of this drive, as for example in the drop that results stantly encounters a certain ambivalence in every de
from its gratification: in the original case of the par lirious belief, from the most calmly affirm ative forms
ticular type of paranoia that we have described (the o f fantastic deliria (where the subject still recognizes
Aimée case),* the delirium vanished when the aim of a “double reality”) to interrogative forms o f so-called
the action was accomplished. We should not wonder conjectural deliria, where every assertion about real
that things occurred likewise during the first months ity is suspecL
that followed the sisters’ crime. The correlative de Analysis, in our case, o f these contents and
fects o f classical descriptions and explanations have forms would permit us to specify the sisters’ place in
long failed to recognize [méconnaître]^ the exis the natural classification o f deliria. They would not
tence, however essential, of such variations, while af be classed in the very limited form o f paranoia that,
firming the stability of paranoiac deliria, whereas by means o f such formal correlations, we have iso
there is only constancy o f structure: this conception lated in our work. They would probably even deviate
leads the experts to erroneous conclusions, and ex from the generic frameworks o f paranoia and enter
plains their embarrassment in the presence o f numer into that of paraphrenia,^ which the genius o f Krae
ous paranoiac crimes, where their sense o f reality pelin isolated as immediately contiguous forms. This
comes to light despite their doctrines, but engenders precise diagnosis, in light o f the chaotic state o f our
nothing in them but incertitude. information, would still be precarious. Furthermore,
As for the Papin sisters, we must grasp the only it would be o f little use to our study o f the crim e’s
trace of a formulation o f delirious ideas prior to the motives, since as we indicated in our work the forms
of paranoia and the adjoining forms o f deliria remain
united by a structural affinity that justifies the appli
* This adage is commonly attributed (in various cation o f the same analytic methods.
forms the best known of which is “Tout comprendre,
c’est tout pardonner”) to Mme. de Staël. (Tran·.]
W hat is certain is that the forms o f psychosis in Doctor Logre for the subtlety o f the term, “psycho
the two sisters are, if not identical, at least closely logical couple,” by which we measure his reserve in
correlative. We have heard in the course of the de this problem. Psychoanalysts themselves, when they
bates the astonishing assertion that it was impossible derive paranoia from homosexuality, style this homo
that two creatures could be struck at the same time sexuality unconscious, “larval” [“larvée”]}* This
with the same madness, or rather develop it sim ulta homosexual tendency is expressed only through a
neously. The assertion is completely false. A paired desperate negation o f itself, which would ground the
delirium [délires à deux] is among the most ancient conviction of being persecuted and designate the
recognized forms of psychosis. Observations show loved one in the persecutor. But what is this singular
that they are inclined13145*to occur between near rela tendency that, so close to its most conspicuous reve
tions, father and son, mother and daughter, brothers lation, would remain forever cut off by a singularly
and sisters. Their mechanism depends in certain transparent obstacle?
cases on the contingent influence exercised by an ac Freud, in an admirable article,17 without giving
tive delirious subject upon a passive, feeble subject us the key to this paradox, furnishes us with all the
W e are going to see that our conception o f paranoia clues needed to find i t He shows in effect that, when
confers a wholly different notion and explains in a in the first stages o f infantile sexuality that we now
more satisfying fashion the criminal parallelism of recognize, the forced abatement of prim itive hostility
the two sisters. between brothers is brought about, an abnormal in
The murderous drive that we consider the foun version can occur from this hostility in desire, and
dation of paranoia indeed would only be a scarcely that this mechanism engenders a special type of ho
satisfying abstraction, if it was not controlled by a mosexual in whom social instincts and activities pre
series of correlative abnormalities of socialized in dominate.13 In fact, this mechanism is constant: this
stincts, and if the actual state o f our knowledge about
the evolution of the personality did not allow us to
consider these instinctual [pulsionnelles]1* abnor 16 The term “larvée“ if used medically to denote >
m alities as contemporaneous in their genesis. Homo malady that manifests itself, by atypical or attenuated
sexuality, sado-masochistic perversion and such are symptoms, in the guise of another. [Trans.]
10
The Papin Sisters
amorous fixation is the prim ordial condition of the which ends in death. Aimée struck the bright crea
first integration o f what we call social tensions with ture whom she hated ju st because that being repre
instinctive tendencies. It is a sorrowful integration, sented the ideal she had of herself. The need for self
on which are stamped already the first sacrificial punishment, the enormous feeling o f guilt can also be
demands that society will never cease to exact from read in the deeds of the Papin sisters, were it only in
its members: such is its link with the personal inten- Christine’s kneeling at the final denouement. But it
tionality to inflict suffering, which constitutes seems that between them the sisters could not even
sadism. This integration occurs, however, according cover the distance necessary to bruise themselves.
to the law of least resistance through an emotional True Siamese twins in spirit [âmes siamoises], they
fixation quite close to the solipsistic self, a fixation formed a world forever closed; reading their disposi
meriting the term narcissistic, wherein the object- tions after the crime. Doctor Logic said, “one would
choice is most sim ilar to the subject: such is the rea think one were seeing double.” W ith only the re
son for its homosexual character. But one must go sources of their islet, they had to resolve their
beyond this fixation in o d e r to arrive at a socially enigma, the human enigma of sex.
effective morality. Piaget’s beautiful studies have One must have lent an attentive ear to the strange
shown us the progress made from the naive egocen declarations of such patients to know the follies that
trism of one’s early participation in the rules o f the their shackled conscience can build upon the enigma
moral game to the cooperative objectivity o f an ideal of the phallus and of female castration. So one dis
ly achieved conscience. cerns in the timid confessions o f the so-called normal
As for our patients, they did not evolve beyond subject the beliefs that he suppresses, and that he
the first stage, and the causes o f such an arrest can be thinks he suppresses because he judges them to be
o f very different origins, some organic (hereditary childish, whereas he is quiet because he clings un
taints), others psychological—infantile psychoanaly knowingly to them still.
sis. Its action seems not to have been absent from the Christine’s statement—“I really think that in an
sisters’ life. other life I must have been my sister’s husband”—is
Truth to tell, well before we made these theoreti reproduced in our patients by many fantastic themes
cal comparisons, the prolonged observation of multi which one has only to heed in order to take in. What
ple cases of paranoia complemented by minute so a long torturous road she had to travel before the des
cial inquiries had led us to consider the structure of perate experience of the crime tore her from her other
paranoia and adjacent deliria as entirely dominated self, and she could, after her first crisis o f hallucina
by the fate o f this fraternal complex. Its considerable tory delirium, when she thought she saw her sister
agency is striking in the observations that we have dead, dead doubtless from that blow, cry before the
published. The emotional ambivalence toward the court who confronted them the words of unbridled
older sister commands all the self-punitive behavior [dessillée]1* passion: “Yes, say yes.”
o f our “Aimée case.” If in the course of her delirium That fateful evening, under anxiety of an immi
Aimée poured accusations of her loving hatred upon nent punishment, the sisters mingled the mirage of
several heads in succession, it was through an effort their illness with the image of their mistresses. They
to free herself from her first fixation, though this ef detested the distress o f the couple whom they carried
fort was aborted: each of the persecutors was really away in an atrocious quadrille. They tore out their
nothing other than a new image, always a mere pris eyes as Bacchantes castrate their victims. The sacri
oner o f Aimée’s narcissism, o f this sister whom our legious curiosity which from the beginning of time
patient had made her ideal. Now we understand what has anguished man moved them in their desire for the
the glass obstacle was that prevented her forever victims and in their attempt to track down in the dead
from knowing that she loved all these persecutors, women’s gaping wounds what Christine in her inno
although she cried out that she did: they were only cence later described to the court as “the mystery of
images. life.”
The “malady of being two” [“mal d'être deux”]
from which these patients suffered hardly freed them
from the malady o f Narcissus. It is a mortal passion
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