PSYCHÉ, REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE PSYCHANALYSE ET DES SCIENCES DE L'HOMME (PSYCHÉ, AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HUMAN SCIENCES)

Founded in 1946 on the initiative of Maryse Choisy, Psyché is defined as an "international review of psychoanalysis and human sciences." The first issue of this monthly review appeared in November 1946 and was followed by another 120 issues until 1963.

The idea for the review took root among a circle of intellectuals that Maryse Choisy brought together between 1944 and 1945. This group of poets, writers, philosophers, and theologians met to exchange ideas on a variety of topics that sometimes included occultism, astrology, and clairvoyance. Philosopher Pierre Bachelard introduced the psychoanalytic element, as did psychoanalyst Juliette Boutonier, whose presence between 1945 and 1946 drew in other analysts like André Berge, Françoise Dolto, René Laforgue, and George Mauco.

In the course of time, a certain number of analysts from the Paris Psychoanalytic Society thus accepted Maryse Choisy's proposition to create the review Psyché. The Revue française de psychanalyse (French Review of Psychoanalysis) had not yet reappeared after the war and Psyché, with its vocation extending to include the "human sciences" was closer to the framework of applied psychoanalysis, being comparable in this respect to Imago.

Maxime Clouzet (Maryse Choisy's husband) was director of the review and the committee of patronage brought together some eminent personalities of the time, people like Louis de Broglie, perpetual secretary of the of the Academy of Science, Pierre Janet from the Institute, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the discoverer of the Sinanthropus, Charles Baudouin, Drs. John Leuba, René Laforgue, Angélo Hesnard, Louis Le Guillant, Charles Odier, andÉdouard Toulouse.

Maryse Choisy directed a small team that included André Berge and George Mauco, both psychoanalysts, as well as other collaborators with artistic and literary vocations in charge of completing the "monthly chronicle" under headings like Painting, Books, Theater, Cinema, and a Review of Reviews. The copy desk was the responsibility of Jacqueline Massière (the future Jacqueline Cosnier), a young philosopher in analytic training.

The first issues enjoyed the benefits of a group of varied and competent collaborators. At the end of 1945, Maryse Choisy had managed to acquire the collaboration of the (rare) psychologists and psychiatrists who practiced psychoanalysis or who were beginning to take an interest in it, as well as eminent personalities from the worlds of science, literature, and philosophy.

In the course of the different issues we thus find the names of André Maurois, Edmond Jaloux, Louis de Broglie, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Marcel Griaule, Georges Dumézil, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Heuyer, Serge Lebovici, Françoise Dolto, Béla Grunberger, Juliette Boutonier, Octave Mannoni, René Laforgue, Charles Odier, René Allendy, Marie Bonaparte, and Angélo Hesnard. It is worth pointing out that the last five of these were among the seven authors in the first issue of the Revue française de psychanalyse in 1927.

Quickly enough, Psyché began to publish contributions by psychoanalysts from other societies in other countries: Emilio Servadio and Nicola Perrotti of the Italian Society, Igor Caruso from Austria, John R. Rees from London, Karen Horney and René Spitz from the United States, Heinrich Meng from German-speaking Switzerland, while the committee of patronage was completed with professors Jean Delay, Henri Gouhier, Daniel Lagache, and Jean Lhermitte.

Congresses came to be organized as an extension of the review: the Royaumont study week on "The fate of collective man" (1947), the International Congress of Catholic Psychiatrists, Analytical Psychotherapists and Educational Psychologists (1949). Psyché published the proceedings of these congresses as well as reports on the different meetings relating to the field of psychology. A supplement to the review also appeared with installments of the "Dictionary of Psychoanalysis and Psychological Technique," directed by Daniel Lagache, the outline of the future The Language of Psychoanalysis.

Psyché played a role in organizing and bringing together the psychoanalytic milieu immediately after World War II. However, the eclecticism and the "ecumenical" preoccupations of its instigator, combined also with the reorganization of the psychoanalytic societies and the reappearance of the Revue française de psychanalyse (in 1948), which was soon complemented by the creation of other specific reviews, led to two phenomena that were to reduce its importance in the analytic world: psychoanalysts had other places where they could exchange ideas, and because of this the review's para-analytic and extra-analytic cultural aspects assumed increasing importance. Moreover, from issue number 15 onward the initial sub-heading of the review, "International Review of Psychoanalysis and Human Sciences," changed to "International Review of Human Sciences and Psychoanalysis."

Jacqueline Cosnier

See also: Choisy, Maryse; France; Laforgue, René.