PASCHE, FRANCIS LÉOPOLD PHILIPPE (1910-1996)

Francis Pasche, physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and full member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, was born in Paris on May 7, 1910, and died there on September 12, 1996.

His mother came from the Champagne region and his father from Switzerland. He was educated to be an atheist but was inculcated with moral principles that were imbued with Jansenist rigidity and Calvinist rigor.

In 1928-29 he began to study pharmaceutics and graduated in 1934. In 1935 he completed his military service as an auxiliary pharmacist near Dole in the east of France. He had a simultaneous and passionate involvement with philosophy and esthetics. He thus began to work toward a primary degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne. His mentors were Victor Basch and Charles Blondel. He studied the great historians of philosophy from the 1930s: Henri Gouhier, Victor Brochard andÉtienne Gilson.

His interest in psychoanalysis dates from the time when he began to study philosophy. Pasche had completed his first two years of medical studies when World War II broke out in 1939. He was mobilized as an auxiliary pharmacist at Vesoul on September 15, 1939. On November 20 he was posted to the Rouffach emergency unit. Imprisoned at Gérardmer on June 22, 1940, he was sent to Stalag II B.

As a member of the health services, he was allowed to return to France on January 28, 1941 and was posted to different Parisian hospitals. He was still a military prisoner, but under particularly favorable conditions that enabled him to complete his medical studies.He graduated in 1944. The Medical Faculty of the University of Paris awarded him a bronze medal for his thesis, conducted under Jean Delay and titled "Psychopathologie du cauchemar" (The psychopathology of the nightmare). In 1948 he was appointed director of the clinical laboratory for mental diseases. The French Medical Association officially recognized him as a psychiatrist in 1951 and as a neuro-psychiatrist in 1953. In 1961 he was appointed assistant consultant at the Sainte-Anne psychiatric center. He continued to work there for more than thirty years training young psychiatrists and as a consultant. His reputation crossed the Atlantic and many Canadians and Latin Americans came there to study under him.

Having been analyzed by John Leuba, he quickly became a member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. He was made a full member in 1950 and was president of the society from 1960 to 1964. He therefore witnessed the rift that took place in 1953, a rift that toward the end of his life he believed could have been avoided. 'In 1959 he married Maria Cléopas, a Greek woman, with whom he had two sons, Alexandre and Jérôme. Francis Pasche was a man of books and culture and for many years he directed a seminar at the Institute of Psycho-analysis: he discoursed with equal ease on philosophy, anthropology, metapsychology, and clinical practice.

To appreciate the full value of some of his writings, they should be read in counterpoint with those of Lacan, a man he both admired and criticized and with whom he had a fascinating but difficult relationship. His work comprises a large number of articles and papers for colloquia and national and international congresses. Some of it has been brought together in two volumes:Á partir de Freud (Beginning with Freud; 1969), and Le Sens de la psychanalyse (The meaning of psychoanalysis; 1983). He made important and original contributions to the clinical treatment of the psychoses, and the theory and clinical treatment of depression. Equally remarkable are his writings on anxiety, the notion of the superego, the issues at stake in analysis, psychoanalytic ethics, and the role of the analyst. His deeply philosophical nature also led him to take an interest in Greek mythology and in the religions of the book.

MichÈle Bertrand

See also: Congress of French-speaking Psychoanalysts from Romance-language Countries; Counter-Oedipus; Excitation; France; Narcissistic neurosis; Société psychanalytique de Paris et Institut de psychanalyse de Paris; Spinoza and psychoanalysis.

Bibliography

Pasche, Francis. (1969).Á partir de Freud. Paris : Payot.

——. (1983) L'imago zero. Revue Française de Psychanalyse, 47, 4, 939-952.

——. (1988). Travail de construction ou, si l'on préfère, de reconstruction. Construction et reconstruction. Bulletin de la Fédération Européenne de Psychanalyse, 31, 19-31.

——. (1993). Mères archaïques et subjectivation. Devenir, 5, 4, 67-77.

——. (1996) Peur de la mort, angoisse de mort, défense du Moi. Revue Française de Psychanalyse, 60, 1, 49-53.