Archives de catégorie : ENG – Regards – 2004 T.22 n°3

Mounir Chamoun : What Does the Islamic Veil Hide ?

The main function of the Islamic veil is to withdraw women’s bodies from the gazes of men and protect men against the gaze of women, as the eyes of womankind are supposed to be vehicles of lethal penetration and clairvoyance. The author tries to show how the traditional conception of the feminine in Islamic countries leads both girls and women to such a bad image of themselves that they accept the domination of men in the often incestuous family surroundings. Hiding the woman is both a precautionary measure and an attempt at keeping her exclusively for oneself.

José Morel Cinq-Mars : The Islamic Veil, a Matter of Modesty ?

Using a dynamic definition of modesty, a psychic movement alternating between veiling, unveiling, and re-veiling, the author attempts to show how the current re-veiling of Moslem women is not, as claimed, the effect of a movement of modesty. It is even opposed to modesty, both because it implies a fixed gaze, and because instead of allowing female desire to express itself without advertising itself, it entirely negates and even tries to eradicate it.

Anne Juranville : Veil, Womanhood, and the Unconscious

The issue of the veil is approached by way of some its structural elements, which cause its “ logic ” to meet up with that of unconscious desire referred to the feminine : the set-up of the drives, the construction of the corporal imaginary that calls upon the concepts of Chose, and of the Lacanian object a. We will speak of how the metaphors of the veil open out onto philosophical and aesthetic fields investigated by way the problematic of castration. Through these psychoanalytical references, it is possible to shed some light on the alienating social consequences of the wearing of the veil by women.

Guy Lavallée : Vision, Thought, Narcissism: What Happens When “Everything Is Visual ? »

Here we will try to posit the relationships between vision, thought, spoken or “ signed ” languages and narcissism in adolescence, such as they are revealed by deaf-muteness. For any deaf person, vision is the object of an over-investment that is both saving and problematic. Its importance need not be stressed, but its preponderance raises some questions. The theory of the “ visual envelope of the ego ” enables us to posit the theoretical issues, and some excerpts from the psychotherapy of a hearing-impaired adolescent bear witness to the clinical issues : narcissistic suffering and the suffering of the thought process.

Renée-Laetitia Richaud, Guy Scharmann : Floating Vision… On the Relevance of Face-to-Face Consultations during Adolescence

Face-to-face is one of the most relevant therapeutic contexts for adolescence. Adolescence is first of all a crisis of narcissism and identity, and the psychoanalyst’s gaze and what he sees of the adolescent eases the latter’s development and work.Two clinical examples illustrate floating vision: a possible approach for the psychoanalyst intending to introduce the visual or the gaze in the psychotherapeutic process.

Bernard Penot : Face-to-Face Consultations and the Psychoanalyst

We can work psychoanalytically with the couch or face-to-face, what is important is that the analyst know how to use the conditions best-suited to allowing the patient to start and carry on as far as he wishes a step towards subjective appropriation of his existence.
The author describes what may underlie a recommendation for a face-to-face beginning to a psychoanalytical treatment: more than the narcissistic pathologies or necessity of the psychoanalyst’s benevolent gaze, these are cases where a disorder of the subjectivating function is in play.
So in face-to-face work the patient will be able to perceive (de visu) more the drive charge of the psychoanalyst’s reactions, and the latter’s task will be to reprise the initial conditions of subjective appropriation that have been hampered.

Adolescence, as the threshold of obligatory subjectivation, lends itself particularly well to this arrangement.

Gérard Bonnet : The gaze, Harbinger of the Enigma

Only for the past half century or so have philosophy and the human sciences considered the gaze in itself and studied its presence and action in current life and in history. Using recent research by historians of mentalities, the author follows step by step the way in which this emergence occurs, in order to highlight the specific character of the corresponding Freudian notion.
Afterwards he imagines how psychoanalysis has gradually come to locate the gaze among the objects that govern our unconscious life. Sometimes confused with the sex, the instance of the superego or guardian, or with a partial object, it should rather be defined as a herald of the enigmatic message, condensing the sexual core of the message and impelling the subject to embody it in one way or another.