Fighting Melancholia: Don Quixote’s Teaching

293 Pages·2016·2.025 MB·English

by  Francoise Davoine

FIGHTING MELANCHOLIA

FIGHTING MELANCHOLIA
Don Quixote’s Teaching
Françoise Davoine
Translated by Agnès Jacob
First published in 2016 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2016 by Françoise Davoine
The right of Françoise Davoine to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-78220-365-0
Typeset by V Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
“Strive, too, that in reading your story
the melancholy may be moved
to laughter […]”
Don Quixote, The Author’s Preface, p. 7
To the old soldiers
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ix
WARNING TO THE READER xi
CHAPTER ONE
Andante! 1
CHAPTER TWO
Cervantes, an old warrior 9
CHAPTER THREE
PTSD: post-traumatic son Don Quixote
(the post-traumatic son of Cervantes) 19
CHAPTER FOUR
First sally, first sessions 25
CHAPTER FIVE
Second sally towards the psychotherapy of trauma 51
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER SIX
Widening of the field of war and beyond 79
CHAPTER SEVEN
Don Quixote becomes a psychoanalyst
in the Sierra Morena 113
CHAPTER EIGHT
Regenerating the social link 159
CHAPTER NINE
A sombre affair 187
CHAPTER TEN
History makes its entrance 203
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Farewell to arms 225
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Bella ciao! ciao! ciao!” 255
REFERENCES 263
INDEX 271
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Françoise Davoine obtained an Agregation in classics (French literature,
Latin and Greek) in 1966, followed by a doctorate in sociology in 1981,
before becoming a psychoanalyst. She worked for thirty years as a psy-
choanalyst in public psychiatric hospitals in France, and as an external
consultant and is currently in private practice. She was a Professor at the
Centre for the Study of Social Movements, École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, where she and Jean-Max Gaudillière
conducted a weekly seminar on ‘Madness and the Social Link’. She
has also made numerous presentations at the Austen Riggs Center
in Massachusetts (USA), as well as elsewhere in the US, in England,
Sweden, Finland, Greece, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Switzerland.
Dr. Davoine is the author of many articles and books, including La Folie
Wittgenstein, Mother Folly, and History Beyond Trauma (with Jean-Max
Gaudillière).
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