Psychoanalysis and foreignness

Abstract

You might remember a film released several years ago: A Couch in New York. In a comedic tone, it told the story of a house swap between an orthodox New York analyst, played by William Hurt, and a young Parisian bohemian, a character portrayed by Juliette Binoche. In this romantic comedy, the director managed to capture something of the specificity of psychoanalysis, difficult to grasp conceptually. The interesting thing is that the one who revealed something about that problematic and fragile position of the analyst was not the character played by the eminent New York psychoanalyst, meticulous and respectful of the rules of the profession we practice, but rather the other one, the ignorant French intruder. What happened? Well, Juliette Binoche's character, already settled in the Manhattan office-house, was placed, by an impulsive patient who was unaware that his analyst had gone on vacation, in the role of analyst herself. Honestly, the young woman tried to tell the patient, who had already lain down on a couch and begun to talk, that she was not an analyst, and that the person the suffering neurotic was looking for was in Paris, which did not prevent the patient from beginning to unfold his tortuous fantasies before Binoche, who sat in the armchair behind the couch. [...]