Life

Anzieu studied philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and was a pupil of Daniel Lagache

Daniel Lagache

French physician, psychoanalyst, and professor at the Sorbonne, Daniel Lagache was born on December 3, 1903, in Paris, where he died on December 3, 1972.'He was one of the leading figures in twentieth century French psychoanalysis.-Career:...

, before undertaking his first psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 with Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

. Then, after discovering that Lacan had also treated his mother ("Aimee"), he began a second analysis with Georges Favez. He retained a deep grudge against Lacan's lack of candor and later also condemned the excesses and arbitrary practices of the Lacanians - highlighting the latter's 'unending dependence on an idol, a logic, or a language', as well as the pervasively tantalizing element in Lacan's approach, with 'fundamental truths to be revealed...but always at some further point'.

Among Anzieu's many significant contributions to psychoanalysis were his work on Freud's self-analysis and his extensive study of groups, relying in particular on the work of Wilfred Ruprecht Bion. Building on the writings of such psychoanalysts as Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein

Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...

 and Heinz Kohut

Heinz Kohut

Heinz Kohut was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.-Early life:Kohut was born...

, Anzieu also sought with great skill to analyze, not so much works of art, but the creative process itself; and he published numerous works on literary creation (Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...

, Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

) and artistic creation (Bacon)'.

Perhaps the most telling strand in his writings, however, was that of the so-called Skin-Ego, and the related concept of the "Psychic Envelope".

On Freud's "Self-Analysis"

'Didier Anzieu, Freud's Self-Analysis (2d ed., 1975; tr. Peter Graham, 1986) is an important, enormously detailed...study of Freud's early life as mirrored in the dreams he chose to recount and analyze in The Interpretation of Dreams '. From a Kleinian viewpoint, Anzieu considered Freud's 'elaboration of psychoanalytic theory...corresponded to a setting up of obsessional defences against depressive anxiety' - emphasising Freud's need to 'defend himself against it through such a degree of intellectualisation'.

On creativity

'Anzieu explores the connections between clinical analysis and self-analysis...and the relationship between self-analysis and creativity'. He also highlights the role of inner resistance to creativity: 'resistance consists of a searing and demoralising doubt as to the value of what we are in the process of discovering'.

On psychic envelopes

Emerging from ideas of holding in such writers as Marion Milner

Marion Milner

Marion Milner , sometimes known as Marion Blackett-Milner, was a British author and psychoanalyst. Outside psychotherapeutic circles, she is better known by her pseudonym, Joanna Field, as a pioneer of introspective journaling.-Biography:...

 and Donald Winnicott

Donald Winnicott

Donald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory. He was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and a close associate of Marion Milner...

, and then 'migrating into Continental psychoanalysis, the idea of the skin-container takes on a life of its own...shap[ing] Didier Anzieu's influential concept of the psychic envelope in The Skin-Ego (Le Moi-peau) '.

'Didier Anzieu (1985) theorized on the skin-ego, the first narcissistic envelope on which the feeling of well-being is based', suggesting for example that 'narcissistic personalities...possess an unusually thick skin ego; in contrast, masochistic and borderline personalities show remarkably thin skin ego'.

Anzieu would extend the concept to a broader notion of "psychic envelope", exploring for example the idea of 'the dream envelope. This is the name Didier Anzieu gives to the visual dream-film, the fine, ephemeral membrane which he thinks of as repalcing the tactile envelope of the ego's vulnerable skin'.

'With his development of a related concept, the "sound envelope" Anzieu articulates the bodily ego's relation to psychic space in terms of breath'.

In terms of groups, Anzieu also maintained that 'there is no group without a common skin, a containing envelope, which makes it possible for its members to experience the existence of a group self'.

Criticism

'For a critique of Anzieu's "interpretatively versatile" pan-pellicularism and his therapeutically oriented model of the skin-container, see Steven Connor, The Book of Skin (London...2004)'.

'Kaja Silverman argues that the emphais by Anzieu and others (including Kristeva) on the maternal voice as sound envelope "grows out of a powerful cultural fantasy...the image of a child held within the environment or sphere of the mother's voice"'.

Further reading

• Didier Anzieu, The Group and the Unconscious (Routledge 1984)
• Didier Anzieu ed, Psychic Envelopes (London 1990)