New Maps for Psychoanalysis / Les Nouvelles Cartes de la psychanalyse

This work intends to conduct a reflection based on the confrontation of the field of psychoanalysis with that of the sciences of the mind. Two reasons, at least, make this enterprise necessary: ​​The progress of neurobiology and the development of cognitive sciences have shed entirely new light on the mechanism of production of mental operations. The practice and theory of psychoanalysis, now a century old, run a serious risk of isolation if they refuse to be questioned on their relations with the other sciences of the mind. All in all, there is no reason why psychoanalysis should escape a critical questioning of its ""progress"" - this is, moreover, what is happening today and with a certain vehemence in the United States. This salutary confrontation will make it possible to determine the fundamentally specific contribution of psychoanalysis, which is to be an original form of communication, between the analysand and the analyst on the one hand, and between the conscious and the unconscious of the subject on the other hand. What type of knowledge does this communication allow to be brought to light? Above all, under what conditions can the psychoanalytic method go beyond the individual and be ""objective""? This plea for a true interdisciplinary dialogue finds a good illustration in the very current question of ""psychotropic"" drugs. It is clear, in fact, that psychotherapy and chemotherapy both have to support each other in the treatment of anxiety or depression. Only in this way will new maps be drawn for psychoanalysis. Professor Daniel Wildlöcher heads the psychiatry department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière.