Notice of contributions to the Journal of Normal and Pathological Psychology

When it was published in January 1904, the Journal of Normal and Pathological Psychology (1904-1986) was directed by Pierre Janet (1859-1947, professor at the Collège de France, and Georges Dumas (1866-1946), lecturer at the Sorbonne. Paulhan's texts published in the Journal of Normal and Pathological Psychology between 1904 and 1909 are not remarkable for their literary value. They come from a future student and are only the testimonies of a secondary activity, that of the reading report in a scholarly journal dominated by academics. Moreover, Paulhan, who did not have these texts, did not retain them at the time of formatting the Tchou edition. that appeared for the first time, in 1903, on fatigue, texts signed by Jean Paulhan Neither fatigue nor aphasia, nor sleepwalking nor even school rhythms were subsequently literary indifferent themes. Finally, there were not so many French writers - or future writers - who spoke of Freud in 1907: there were simply none. to our knowledge, no other.
It was in this year that C. G. Jung created the Society for Freudian Research (Gesellschaft für freudische Forschung) in Zurich, chaired by Bleuler, and which brought together Ludwig Binswanger, Franz Riklin, Édouard Claparède and precisely Alphonse Maeder. It was dissolved in 1913. It was therefore through Jungian means that Paulhan became aware of what was then called psychoanalysis. _The fact is all the more remarkable as it is already an _ epitome _ of Freudian thought, taken from Maeder (1882-1971), assistant doctor at the Swiss epileptic asylum in Zurich. After Freud, Alphone Maeder defines the dream, not as a disordered mental activity, but as the result of two antagonistic mental forces, a desire, almost always repressed, and a censorship which stops it in passing to modify it according to its requirements. Distinction of the dream, such as it is, and its material, much richer than it, condensation, displacement or transfer, dramatization finally, everything is there. But Paulhan subsequently did not seek in the least to take advantage of this precedence. It even seems that having first been among the very first to talk about Freud's work, he then turned away from it, as if this question, for him, was obsolete, when most of his contemporaries pretended to discover psychoanalysis.
In 1913 again, Le Spectateur speaks of the existence of a sort of unconscious idea, revealed by an awkwardness in conversation, and mentions Der Witz une seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten — but it is in the section of "Humorous Varieties". However, he gives the following account a few pages later:

Sig. Freud: Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Leipzig and Vienna, Deuticke, 1912, 5 M. or 6 K.

This work on the mind, or more precisely on the wit of words (Witz means both witty word and spirit of word), is linked to Freud's famous theories on the role of the unconscious in mental life. The unconscious tendencies of our being, which develop decisively during our early childhood, and especially in the sexual order, then must, in the course of social life, always be "repressed" (verdrängt) in accordance with morality, with conventions, constantly seek obscurely to open a passage to the outside, to express themselves in some way. Whether reason relaxes its control or abdicates it, as it does in sleep, these tendencies will express themselves through dreams, and this is what Freud demonstrates in his Traumdeutung. If, in conversation or intellectual work, attention relaxes for a moment, the seemingly least significant slips of the tongue can be linked to these same tendencies, and this is what the Psychopathology of Alltagsleben explains. Finally, more intentionally perhaps but under the cover of a joking attitude, this is again the process of the jot, studied in the work reported here. — And even the process acquires greater importance, because it does not remain individual, but becomes social: the witticism, — and history confirms the fact by numerous testimonies,— becomes a means of revolt against authority. — Whatever one may think of Freud's entire theory and the school of "psychoanalysis" that he founded, this book provides a very rich and ingenious classification for work like that of which our "Humorous Varieties" can suggest the idea. Certain particular problems give rise to detailed analyses.

(Text reproduced with the kind permission of the author)

© Bernard Baillaud