Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface by Jean-Michel Rabaté

Preliminary note

1 Cruelty and absolute dependence

2 The primary unity called “destruction”

3 The void and the “system tending towards unity”

4 Immortal life and the feminine phallus

5 “WOMAN” and the myth of Prometheus

6 Prometheus: the bringer of fire

7 Topography of the included third and the basic autistic structure of the subject

8 The totalization of a “masculine body”

9 The Rat Man: the split-off function of the mother

10 The hidden third and negation

Epilogue

Glossary

References

Index

About the Author

Touria Mignotte is a doctor, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Her practice with psychotic adults and autistic children led her to engage in research recasting the theoretical contributions of Freud and Lacan in association with those of Winnicott. She is a member of the Société de psychanalyse freudienne in Paris and the author of several articles and the book La cruauté. Le corps du vide (L’Harmattan, 2013).

Reviews

"In this book, Touria Mignotte takes an entirely new heuristic approach to the origin of "cruelty" at a multidisciplinary level, associating biology, quantum physics and psychoanalysis. Her considerable contribution opens up new horizons for "interminable" analyses which get bogged down in conflicts that cannot be overcome with the tools of free association and free-floating attention alone. "One form of madness, the mother’s, links up with another, the primitive father’s, inventing otherness at each birth": this troubling thought elaborated by Mignotte roots clinical psychopathology in the strangest picture of parenthood that we can imagine, the failure of which constitutes the basis of the "cruel superego".Adamo Virgine, didactic member of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and author of several books including Prenderesi cura. Sul senso dell’esperienza psicoanalitica. (Angeli, Milano, 1992) "In this totally innovative book, Touria Mignotte considers Winnicott’s "primary destructive impulse" in terms of a double return to the primitive father envisaged as a physical void. This identification fecundates the primitive father for whom each conception is a sort of "big bang", as in the universe. Life emerges from destruction, but at what price? In the clinical examples, the author renews the analyst’s function at the heart of this big bang, taking upon herself physically the cruelty that structures the symptom."Pia del Sylvestris is a training member of the Winnicott Centre, of the Italian Society for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, and author of La Difficile Identita (Borla, 2006), translated into French and English (Difficult Identities, Routledge, 2018), as well as into German."How does one free oneself from the mother as a container and find within oneself the father of whom one is merely the formal content? Touria Mignotte shares with us here her erudition and clinical knowledge. Her approach to children and psychosis introduces us to her own particular method, but one that is more generally at work in a psychoanalytic treatment. Her writing is truly a process of weaving that sews over and over again the discourse of the Other and never lets go. We get a glimpse of the hand held out by the analyst in the most difficult clinical situations."Christine Dal Bon, psychanalyst Roma Author of Oublier son nom, Histoire d'un cas: l'Amnésique de Collegno (préface de Michel Plon), Édition Imago, 2014.

"In this book, Touria Mignotte takes an entirely new heuristic approach to the origin of 'cruelty' at a multidisciplinary level, associating biology, quantum physics, and psychoanalysis. Her considerable contribution opens up new horizons for 'interminable' analyses which get bogged down in conflicts that cannot be overcome with the tools of free association and free-floating attention alone. 'One form of madness, the mother’s, links up with another, the primitive father’s, inventing otherness at each birth': this troubling thought elaborated by Mignotte roots clinical psychopathology in the strangest picture of parenthood that we can imagine, the failure of which constitutes the basis of the 'cruel superego'.Adamo Virgine, didactic member of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and author of several books including Prenderesi cura. Sul senso dell’esperienza psicoanalitica"In this totally innovative book, Touria Mignotte considers Winnicott’s 'primary destructive impulse' in terms of a double return to the primitive father envisaged as a physical void. This identification fecundates the primitive father for whom each conception is a sort of 'big bang', as in the universe. Life emerges from destruction, but at what price? In the clinical examples, the author renews the analyst’s function at the heart of this big bang, taking upon herself physically the cruelty that structures the symptom."Pia del Sylvestris, training member of the Winnicott Centre, of the Italian Society for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, and author of La Difficile Identita, translated into French and English (Difficult Identities, Routledge, 2018), as well as into German"How does one free oneself from the mother as a container and find within oneself the father of whom one is merely the formal content? Touria Mignotte shares with us here her erudition and clinical knowledge. Her approach to children and psychosis introduces us to her own particular method, but one that is more generally at work in a psychoanalytic treatment. Her writing is truly a process of weaving that sews over and over again the discourse of the Other and never lets go. We get a glimpse of the hand held out by the analyst in the most difficult clinical situations."Christine Dal Bon, psychoanalyst in Rome and author of Oublier son nom, Histoire d'un cas: l'Amnésique de Collegno