Érudit's RSS Feed

Présentation du numéro

Mylaine Poirier, Louise Roberge and Chantal Saint-Jarre

L’histoire de l’APPQ et quelques réflexions sur son identité en 2005 : vingt ans plus tard, un retour sur le passé, un regard sur le présent, un élan vers l’avenir

Marie-Andrée Linteau
This text presents the speech given at the Association des psychothérapeutes psychanalytiques du Québec (APPQ) »s twentieth anniversary in 2005. It addresses the history of the association during the twenty years following its founding through the perspective of successive presidents and based on the written traces during this period. It identifies the objectives pursued by the APPQ since its inception, its evolution, its achievements, and its challenges. It provides important reflections on the specific identity of the association. It offers a perspective on the future.

Une histoire porteuse d’avenir : l’Association des psychothérapeutes psychanalytiques du Québec (APPQ) de 2005 à 2025

Louise Roberge
This article examines the evolution of the APPQ from 2005 to 2025. It describes the adaptations required since the implementation of the law governing psychotherapist licenses, the practice of psychotherapy, and continuing education. Following the gradual closure of private institutes training psychoanalytic psychotherapists, the association has evolved. Initially founded to bring together and provide continuing education to psychotherapists duly trained in the psychoanalytic approach, it now also includes a training program for psychotherapists wishing to become psychoanalytic psychotherapists. The status of member in training, established in 2017, was added to that of regular member. Being a member of the association helps consolidate one’s professional identity as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and fulfills a need for belonging. The report also discusses the unique role played by the association in disseminating psychoanalytic thought on a cultural and social level, through Cinépsy and its evenings of discussion and debate. It identifies structural and organizational challenges, mentions the contributions of collaborators, and outlines the association’s current challenges.

Le virage numérique à l’APPQ : mise en perspective

Chantal Saint-Jarre
This article describes the creation and implementation of the APPQ’s French-language website in the 2000s and beyond. It pays tribute to those who volunteered their time to ensure that the APPQ’s website was user friendly, easy to navigate and to manage. Through its associative website, the APPQ is fully integrated into the postmodern world of quality digital information and the web community, particularly the psychoanalytic community.

L’Association des psychothérapeutes psychanalytiques du Québec. Sur les traces d’une naissance tumultueuse

Vincent Cardinal
Using a documentary base drawn primarily from the archives of the Association des psychothérapeutes psychanalytiques du Québec (APPQ), the author traces the pivotal moments in its history. He highlights how its development was shaped by unconscious group identifications and by its place in the socio historical context of the time. Finally, he restores fathers Noel Mailloux to the place he should have occupied from the beginning in the history of the APPQ’s lineage, that is, as a founding figure on a par with Jeanne Beaudry, Robert Pelletier, and Hubert Van Gijseghem.

La bisexualité psychique

François Richard
The evolution of the concept of bisexuality is discussed from biological, social, historical, mythological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic perspectives. It addresses the ongoing mystery concerning sex differences and the open interplay with autoeroticism and bisexuality. The views of Freud and Judith Butler, as well as lively debates on transgender experiences during adolescence, are explored. The concept of psychic bisexuality is contextualized and defined, with Freud describing it as an endless variation within the male/female series, which does not constitute a binary whole since sexual polymorphism structurally rejects it. The issue of Oedipal identifications, the complexity of lived experience, and psychic organization become so intensified that the subject often struggles to think about and contain them. The femininity of a man does not correspond to that of a woman, nor does a woman’s masculinity match that of a man, which endlessly reactivates the processes of subjectivation. The play of bisexual identifications complicates the psychic work of the psychoanalyst and analysand, as well as transfer and countertransference. Clinical illustrations are provided, showing voices expressed in feminine or masculine tones and the typical bisexual rhythm during sessions.

Oedipe déformé, polymorphisme sexuel et genre

François Richard
The term “deformed” Oedipus refers to something universal—beyond a problematic organization of the Oedipus complex in neurotic conditions and an uncertain, disorganized Oedipal conflictuality in borderline states. It relates to a societal malaise when authority, the superego, the Law, and the triadic relations fail to provide the help hoped. Deformed Oedipus and sexual polymorphism undermine seemingly well-established psychic organizations, which can be confusing for clinicians. The deformed Oedipus suffers from—and enjoys—an attraction to hallucinatory, unreal objects, perverted remnants of early proximity to parental bodies, especially when there have been discontinuities or fractures in early object relations. The Oedipus complex is both a problem for the psychoanalyst, who hesitates between various aims and interventions (more or less situated within the developmental Oedipal axis), and for the patient, who is affected by distortions in their unfinished post-Oedipal organization. The contemporary psychoanalyst may sometimes feel stunned or surprised, but this can be processed through personal analysis, reflexivity, and training. By reducing prejudices and preconceptions regarding therapeutic approaches, they can make progress. Several clinical illustrations are provided.

Le phare de la tiercéité : dialogue avec François Richard suivant la conférence sur l’Oedipe déformé, le polymorphisme sexuel et le genre. Colloque des 40 ans de l’APPQ, 25 octobre 2025

Martin Gauthier
The suggestions made by François Richard can be approached through the prism of thirdness, which comprises bisexuality together with otherness and thirdness. The analyst simultaneously experiences and inflicts thirdness, making them bound to be faced with figures of repressive superego, which become hurdles to a total subjectivation.

Origine et évolution du désir de transmission de la psychanalyse

Jacqueline Labrèche
This article explores the origin and evolution of a desire for transmission from childhood to maturity. It examines the dimensions of transmission in psychoanalysis as perceived, felt, and implemented consciously or unconsciously, often unbeknownst to both the person transmitting and the one receiving. It aims to answer intriguing questions that arise throughout the reflection: What is meant by transmission in psychoanalysis? What does it seek to transmit? By what means? Why? In what context? What are the stakes of this transmission? What are the resistances at play? The final part focuses on the role of transmission and the possible avenues for transmission that can be pursued, delved into, developed, or to be invented by the APPQ.

Transmettre la psychanalyse : de l’écoute à l’écrit

Suzanne Tremblay
The author explores her vision of transmission and the place that writing occupies within it. At the heart of the act of writing lies the importance of cultivating a sensitive ear that is not imprisoned by concepts but open to the unexpected and the unsettling. Indeed, transmission cannot be limited to shared knowledge; it is inseparable from the experience of analysis. But what happens when the analyst attempts to transmit the experience of therapy through writing? How can this very particular experience be conveyed? Is it possible to preserve the movement of the session, its liveliness, the passion of transference, without distorting them? The act of writing is also a way of bearing witness to the traumatic aspect inherent in all therapy by sharing it with our peers. This impossible profession, as Freud liked to remind us, cannot be practiced alone. Only by submitting our practice to another ear can we renew our own and avoid the pitfalls of the passion aroused by transference, which sometimes leads to excesses.

Le retour de l’idéal

Pierre Joly
This text analyzes the paradox posed by the idealization of psychoanalytic discourse for clinicians. It particularly highlights the contradiction experienced by the clinician between their great knowledge, possibly idealized, and the necessary position of “not knowing” required to listen to their patient. The introduction of narcissism into Freud’s thought, in 1914, serves as a basis for shedding light on a dialectic between ego-libido and object-libido, at work in the session and impossible to resolve. The text also emphasizes how, in Freudian thought, narcissism is constructed in the gaze of the object. It analyzes the implications in the training and supervision relationship, in the connection to the group and the institution, and even in the relationship to the patient. The text clarifies that the narcissistic investment from the “masters” and adherence to the ideal of the group, necessary for the structuring of the subject, must be distinguished from their pathological forms. It emphasizes the idea that a living creativity, a potential space for connection between the clinician’s self and the patient-object, must be opposed to an idealizing discourse on creativity.

Psychanalyse d’enfant, psychanalyse profane ?

Réal Laperrière
Freud was always interested in children and clearly supported analytic work with them, considering that adjustments were necessary. However, child psychoanalysis was from the beginning considered dubious, even profane, and its status remained ambiguous in psychoanalytic societies. Resistance to it seems to be rooted in questions of apparatus, dissymmetry, “après-coup” and observable. Its place in the training of the analyst is debated.

Dans l’empreinte de leurs pattes. Humanimalité, médiation animale et élaboration psychique en psychothérapie psychanalytique

Emmanuelle Fournier Chouinard
This text explores the therapeutic power of animal assisted psychotherapy within a psychoanalytic framework, through the clinical experience of Jimmy, a suffering adolescent. The interspecies encounter, here carried by two ducks, becomes a catalyst for connection, symbolization, and subjectivation. The animal-partner, far from being a mere tool, acts as a sensitive subject, presumed capable of entering a transferential relationship. The Humanimal Model (Fournier Chouinard, 2021) supports a clinical posture in which the animal, free and communicative, actively contributes to the patient’s psychic elaboration. Through shared scenes, sometimes drive-laden, the text shows how animal action can embody the unspeakable, support differentiation, and open a space for psychic play. The interspecies clinical vision, emerging from a singular therapeutic dispositif, draws on psychoanalytic references (Freud, Winnicott, Roussillon) and ethological insights, while integrating a trans-species perspective. It proposes a living, inclusive clinical practice that honors animal otherness, particularly suited to patients on the margins. This work beckons us to set our steps in the path of their pawprints to receive the humanimal light they shed upon our human struggles.

Histoires d’identités, de guerres, d’immigrations et de traumas transgénérationnels

Zeina Zerbé
Although immigration may correspond to a quest to come to terms with potentially traumatic experiences that have lacerated a person’s ties to their country of origin, the need for integration, conformity and adherence to the host country that I noticed among various patients in therapy, coming from Lebanon, Syria and North African countries, was immediately catapulted and questioned by the outbreak of war in the Middle East in October 2023. The ‘psychic chaos’, ‘their world now pierced by the traumatic abyss’ (Saglio-Yatzimirsky, 2023, p 40-41) engendered by the war striking their own people has provoked in them a kind of rupture in the social ties with friends, colleagues and university professors, who were then perceived as insensitive, described as ‘white’, in a world that had become extremely polarized, binary and impulse-driven. The ‘murderous identities’ (Maalouf, 1998), the places and people threatened with erasure (Altounian, 2019) may have reactivated, on both sides, individual and collective transgenerational traumas related to the histories of wars, occupations, Holocaust, massacres, Nakba and displacement of populations that marked the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The article also examines the importance of the psychoanalytic process in addressing deep-seated trauma in individual and collective lived experiences.

Le contre-transfert sur une médiation picturale : la figurabilité psychique et le sentiment d’inquiétante étrangeté

Diane Guay
A clinical case is presented in the frame of psychanalytical psychotherapy with pictorial mediations. The interest of this clinical case lies not only with the study onto the use of pictorial mediations as projective tests. This study concentrates on the psychic figurability pertaining to the one of the patient’s pictorial representations and the one of the psychotherapist counter-transference onto the representations (Botella and Botella, 2007). The analytic interpretation of the counter-transference, as a feeling of strangeness (Freud, 1919; Chouvier, 1998) is broached in application to a post-surgery drawing presented was suggestive of the presence of a second neurological disorder which one was confirmed. The therapeutic effects of this analytical frame allow us, to conclude, much like Green (1998) did, that the psychic casuality is neither intrapsychic or intersubjective; it requires mediator instances to provide a satisfactory image of the psyche.

Le maillage entre le traitement psychanalytique des enfants et l’analyse des adultes

Terry Zaloum
Is there continuity between child psychoanalysis and adult psychoanalysis? Drawing on clinical cases, the author examines the effects of analysis or psychotherapy carried out during childhood and highlights the difficulty of identifying its repercussions on subsequent psychological development and predicting its long-term impact. She also sheds light on the complexity of analytical work and the essential role of the transference relationship. Analytical practice with children poses specific challenges in terms of framework and transference. Early experiences, sometimes marked by trauma, influence the construction of the subject through identification. Finally, analytical work with children enriches the analyst’s sensitivity to transference dynamics in adults, particularly in the handling of affect and countertransference experiences.

Pendant le confinement pandémique et la distanciation sociale, une bouffée d’air à l’APPQ : les soirées d’échanges et de débats en ligne

Chantal Saint-Jarre
This article recounts the establishment of a uniting professional activity during the Covid-19 pandemic: evenings of exchange and debate, offered twice a year via videoconference. These evenings fostered interdisciplinary encounters with experts from Quebec and beyond—psychoanalytic psychotherapists, visual artists, teachers, psychologists, and psychoanalysts—who came to speak to us, and to discuss with us the wounds of collective memory, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and identity construction.

Cinépsy : 25 ans de dialogue entre cinéma et psychanalyse

André Jacques, Fabienne Espaignol, Martin Gauthier and Silan Ulgen
This article traces the history of the Cinépsy Evenings, a film club founded in 2001 under the auspices of the APPQ, highlighting its psychoanalytic foundations, its evolution, its contributions, and its shortcomings. It is both a critical reflection on a long-term collective experience and a call to rethink film commentary in a clinical, cultural, and interdisciplinary context.

Ce qu’il faut pour vivre : réflexions sur Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (2000) d’Agnès Varda

Eduardo Ralickas
The following text offers an interpretation of Agnès Varda’s film The Gleaners and I (2000) in light of the question: What does it take to live? The author first provides an overview of the filmmaker’s biography to highlight key elements structuring much of her output as both filmmaker and visual artist, namely, the ability to think through images (both physical and mental), art history as a creative force, and the primacy of narration. The author then situates The Gleaners and I within the context of the crisis of representation of the 1990s, which allows for a better understanding of the historical significance of Varda’s film as well as its ongoing evocative power. The text concludes with a brief discussion of Gérard Wajcman’s image theory as expounded in the book Fenêtre (2004). By linking the themes of survival and creativity to the life embodied in images (here understood as “subjects”), Varda’s film is shown to comprise an invitation couched in figural terms, both intimate and social, in which participants are called upon to take part in, and pursue, the life that images offer.

La vérité peut-elle triompher de tout ? Commentaire sur le film La salle des profs

Martin Gauthier
The film La salle des profs (The Teachers’ Lounge) uses the microcosm of a German secondary school to reveal issues that permeate the entire world today, particularly those concerning justice and social integration. It showcases the fragility of social bonds and the dangers of divisive solutions. The commentary highlights the situation of the two main protagonists, a teacher and her student, to underline what unites and divides them.

Emilia Pérez ou le rendez-vous manqué de Jacques Audiard avec la réalité trans

Emmanuel Piché
This short text is a commentary offered during a screening of the film Emilia Pérez as part of the Cinépsy series at the Cinéma du Parc. While acknowledging the film’s considerable merits, it highlights a lack of depth and a misuse of the trans issue by director Jacques Audiard. It also suggests several points of reference for reflecting on this topic, including the subjects of psychic bisexuality, transsexuality, and transgender identity. The latter, the author argues, is more closely linked to a non-binary epistemology, which poses the most pertinent questions for psychoanalysis.

Transmission intergénérationnelle et mémoire collective

Chantal Saint-Jarre
“Il faut bien que ça serve à quelque chose d’être vieux” (Being old may as well serve some purpose). This statement, spoken by Roger, reflects my own thoughts. Friendship blooms between this retired man (a grumpy, vulgar alcoholic) and the little Hélène, ten years old, and solidifies after she falls victim to a sexual assault. She will be eternally grateful for his intervention, which allowed her to avoid the worst. We might say that he saves her, but she saves him too by gifting him a copy of Hemingway’s novel (1952), which he will read and assimilate completely before dying. The book serves as a symbol of intergenerational transmission and carries collective memories for Helen’s and Roger’s families, as well as for the film enthusiasts and bookworms in the audience.