Cinq cents ans de bibliographie hippocratique (1473–1982)

doing justice to Freud's text, to Schreber's text, and to a few others, less memorable, besides, Chabot baulks at the prospect of writing the history of the real, whether it be of psychoanalysis or of individual texts-all he allows psychoanalysis to aspire to is the narrative history of fiction, in place of the historical reconstruction of (psychic) reality. Reading as a literary critic does, regarding Freud as the literary critic at work with texts that speak, Chabot produces a finely textured version of Schreber's memoirs, hinging his interpretation around the injustice the Senatsprasident suffered, his fear of succumbing (both mortally and sexually), and his preoccupation with domination and submission. Chabot discerns autonomy and justice as the central themes of Schreber's paranoiac system. Yet Chabot wishes to link this up with bits and pieces of psychoanalytic theory which mesh well with this reading-such as the American analysts Erikson's and Lichtenstein's concern with the sense of identity and self-worth. However , the small change of these concepts, enticing him into a vapid jargon, does not match his sensitive literary discernments-one cannot but feel that the second tier of his argument, that literary studies and therapeutic interpretation both depend on a psychology, does not match the subtleties of his own dialogue with the text. Chabot's book is a sensitive guide to the book that our most famous madman left behind, but it offers little in the way of providing a single foundation for literary studies and psychoanalysis, nor does it keep at bay the arbitrariness so often encountered when this or that psychological theorist tries out his hand on whatever text comes to hand. Other theorists, particularly those following Lacan, have discovered that psychoanalysis is essentially a verbal exercise, without feeling the need to underpin the new-found affinities of psychoanalysis and literary studies with a psychology of autonomy and self-determination, to which Chabot clings as the symbol of humanistic individualism. So even the discerning Chabot lets his "vulgar" psychological side dominate the central sections of the book. Where he is most stimulating is in following out the implications of the "relativistic" assumption that "for psychoanalysis, the Real is a construct, a reading. . ." (p. 147). On the other hand, Balmary urges the revision and overthrow of the Freudian myths of guilt and secret desire, so that in any given biography the causal power of the unequivocal Real may be revealed. What these …