Édouard Pichon

Édouard Pichon (French: [piʃɔ̃]; 24 June 1890 – 20 January 1940) was a French pediatrician, grammarian and psychoanalyst.

Édouard Pichon
Born	(1890-06-24)24 June 1890 Sarcelles, France
Died	20 January 1940(1940-01-20) (aged 49) Paris, France
Scientific career
Fields	Pediatrics, linguistics, psychoanalysis

Career

A distinguished and innovative grammarian,^[1] Pichon was analysed by Eugénie Sokolnicka, and became a founding member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society in 1926.^[2] A member of the royalist and reactionary Action Française, Pichon represented the jingoistic strand of French psychoanalysis,^[3] with his belief in "the genuine culture and the true civilization of our country...this fundamental Frenchness".^[4]

Through his mixture of linguistic and psychoanalytic thinking, Pichon was a powerful influence on Jacques Lacan (as well as a practical mentor).^[5] In Écrits, Lacan paid tribute to "a divination that I can attribute only to his practise of semantics...that guided him in people's dark places".^[6]

Among the psychoanalytic concepts introduced by what Élisabeth Roudinesco called Pichon's "fatalist genius",^[7] were those of oblatory, scotomization, and foreclosure.

See also

• Francoise Dolto
• Georges Bataille
• Pierre Janet
• René Laforgue