PERRIER, FRANÇOIS (1922-1990)

The French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst François Perrier was born on July 25, 1922 in Paris and died on August 2,1990, also in Paris, at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.

His father, Martial, was a journalist and poet—his works were published by his friend Bernard Grasset—and his mother, a musician, taught him to play the piano when he was a very young child. He studied medicine and then psychiatry in Paris, and in 1951 defended his doctoral thesis directed by Jean Delay, titled "Les données apportées par la spectrographie dans l'étude du syndrome humoral de l'électrochoc" (The contribution of spectographic data to the study of humoral syndrome in electroshock therapy).

In 1949 Perrier went into analysis with Maurice Bouvet, and in 1953 he participated in the student revolt in the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP; Paris Psychoanalytical Society). He followed the founders of the Société française de psychanalyse (SFP; French Society of Psychoanalysis), becoming an associate member at the same time as Vladimir Granoff and Serge Leclaire, in 1954, the year his first psychoanalytic text, "La psychothérapie des schizophrènes" (Psychotherapy for schizophrenics) was published.

Beginning in 1956 he provided psychoanalytic consultations at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne at the same time as presentations of the patients of Daniel Lagache and Jacques Lacan, as well as a seminar on analytic clinical practice with Leclaire and Granoff. In 1953 he undertook a period under Lacan's supervision, and in 1956 began an analysis with him that lasted until 1963.

From 1960 Perrier, Granoff, and Leclaire (nick-named "the Troika") took part in various negotiations with the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), attempting to secure the integration of the SFP. After the failure of these attempts, Perrier joined the camp of Lacan.

It was in Perrier's home that, on June 21, 1964, Lacan founded theÉcole freudienne de Paris (Freudian School of Paris). Perrier was on theÉcole freudienne's first board of directors; he was also the first to resign from the board, on December 1, 1966, on grounds of disagreement over the training of analysts. On January 26, 1969, during the hearing on "the pass" at the Hôtel Lutetia, he resigned from theÉcole freudienne, along with Piera Aulagnier and Jean-Paul Valabrega. Again at his home, the Quatrième Groupe (Fourth Group) was founded in February 1969; he became its first president. In 1969 he wrote an article on training analysis that appeared in the first two issues of Topique. He finally resigned from the editorial committee of this journal in 1974, following its refusal to publish his article, "Thanatol." Thereafter he devoted himself to the publication of his work, with the collaboration of Jacques Sédat. He resigned from the Quatrième Groupe in 1981.

Perrier's vast body of work shows an analytic and original approach to the totality of clinical practice, whether it is a question of phobias (1956), erotomania (1966), schizophrenia and psychosis (from 1956), alcoholism, hysteria, or female sexuality. He also contributed to thinking about the training of analysts and training analysis (1969).

For many years Perrier taught a seminar in psychoanalysis. Some of his seminars have been published.

Jacques SÉdat

See also: Alcoholism; Claustrophobia; Colloque sur l'inconscient; École freudienne de Paris; Femininity; France; Pass, the; Psychoanalytic splits; Quatrième Groupe (O. P. L. F.); Société française de psychanalyse.

Bibliography

Perrier, François. (1978). La chaussée d'Antin (incl. Perrier's unpublished correspondence with Lacan, biography and bibliography established by J. Sédat). Paris: Albin Michel; new ed. 1994.

——. (1984). Les corps malades du signifiant: séminaires 1971-1972. Paris: InterÉditions.

——. (1985). Double lecture: le transubjectal: séminaires 1973-1974. Paris: InterÉditions.

Perrier, François; and Granoff, Vladimir. (1960). Le désir et le féminin. Paris: Aubier.