An Open Letter in a Closed Envelope

by | Vol 28 (1/2) 2010

The author writes a long letter to a psychiatric patient with whom he has been corresponding for several years. The letter was written on the occasion of a Congress on chronicity as the central theme (“Psychoanalytic work with chronic patients, Gent, 16. April, 2008). It is primarily a personal letter covering some important themes in their conversations: time, the attitude towards psychiatry, life and death, the father and a woman. The author tries to describe their humane encounter and how this affects both author and patient.

Related articles

  • The Odd and the Institution: A Letter to the Stranger of Camus

    In a letter addressed to Meursault, the stranger in Albert Camus' novel of the same name, we try to grasp the significance an institution can have for the human being. For instance in the novel it is clear that Meursault is content in his position of the accused. Perhaps the institution functions as a protective shield, or acquires a translating or mediating role between actuality and history, between guilt and anxiety, between the familiar and the strange.

  • Freud's "Project" – A purloined letter

    The present article, based on more detailed work by the author (Wegener, 2004) deals with Freud's Project of a Scientific Psychology. Taking into account the con¬text in which the manuscript was written in 1895, namely, Freud's correspondence with Wilhelm Fließ, the Project is seen as a letter in the proper sense of the word and, there¬fore, is distinguished from writing intended for publication. Published posthumously and surreptitiously in 1950, it is read as a purloined letter. Lacan's revisiting of the…

  • Revisiting Walking Back to Happiness (2010). An Interview

    This interview investigates the making of Pascal Poissonnier's (1973) film Walking Back to Happiness (2010) in which the cineast recounts how he uncovered a long-held family secret concerning the identity of the natural father of his father. The dialogue focusses, on the following aspects: 1. The effect of the camera on speech; 2. Fatherhood and the Name-of-the-Father; 3. The influence of the cineast's own analysis on the making of his film; 4. His family history; 5. His relationship with his…