Inscribed and signed by Lacan to René Char:
“À Monsieur René Char, au poëte d'Artine, très sympathiquement, J. Lacan, 30 mars 1933.”
On 18 June 1931, at the Sainte-Anne hospital, Lacan met for the first time Marguerite Anzieu, née Pantaine (1892–1981): hospitalized for having attempted to stab an actress, Huguette Duflos, on the grounds that she was threatening the life of her young son Didier, the patient held all of Lacan’s attention, “who made of her a case of erotomania and self-punitive paranoia. Between the psychiatrist and Marguerite there was never the slightest understanding. She in no way sought to be treated or taken in charge, and he did not seek to convince her to regard herself as a patient. For he was interested in this woman only to illustrate his doctrine of paranoia” (Élisabeth Roudinesco, Lacan, envers et contre tout, 2011). Two years later, on the basis of the case study, his doctoral work was completed, devoted to La psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité.
Jacques Lacan “[…] defended it in 1932 before a jury presided over by Henri Claude. In this thesis, he does not hesitate to propose a renovation of psychiatry: a partial renovation, founded on psychoanalysis, but one that leads him to introduce psychosis into the field of psychoanalysis, by way of paranoia, and not by way of schizophrenia as Jung did. The thesis was published by Le François in Paris, and it should be noted in this regard that there was no review in the Revue française de psychanalyse, whereas from the psychiatrists there is a review in L’Encéphale, signed by Henri Ey. This publication was also noticed by Paul Nizan in L’Humanité, by René Crevel in Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution, by Salvador Dalí in Le Minotaure, and by Jean Bernier in La Critique sociale (a Marxist review founded by Boris Souvarine)” (Jacques Sédat).
Lacan also received the Prix Jules Baillarger — named after a nineteenth-century alienist — of the Académie nationale de médecine, announced on 13 March 1934 and awarded to Lacan on 11 December.
The Le François edition of the thesis exists in two forms, almost identical and sharing a common achevé d’imprimer of 1 October 1932: the whole edition was printed before the defense, which took place at the beginning of November, with Henri Claude — who occupied the chair of the clinic of mental illnesses from 1922 to 1939 at the Sainte-Anne hospital — as president of the jury.
It was in the month preceding this defense and in the quarter that followed that he presented several of the copies of his thesis to — in most cases — his female and male colleagues, up to the beginning of 1933. In the meantime, he had been appointed, by prefectoral decree, “Titular chef de clinique of the clinic of infant neuropsychiatry of the clinical asylum of the Sainte-Anne hospital”: whether at his own request or a change desired by his publisher Le François is not known, but it was decided to add this appointment to the publication: the covers and title pages were thus modified with the addition, beneath his name, of the mention “chef de clinique at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris.”
This modification probably occurred at the beginning of the year, in March at the latest, since this copy inscribed to René Char was sent on the 30th. It is, to date, the earliest inscription on a copy bearing this mention. The copy that chronologically precedes it bore an inscription dated 24 February — on a copy without the mention: that of Lise Deharme, the muse of the Surrealists who, at that same moment, was publishing a poem by Jacques Lacan in her review Le Phare de Neuilly.
The copies of the first printing are, in their vast majority, inscribed: those that were not modified continued to be presented after the month of March, with or without an inscription; those of the modified printing remained available at the publisher’s, Lacan continuing to present a few of them, but distinctly fewer. Apart from this copy destined for René Char, only two other copies are known with inscriptions dated to October, which particularly highlights the decision to present one to the poet as soon as the addition of the “chef de clinique” mention had been made. Copies without the mention are rare without inscriptions; the reverse is true for copies with the mention.
René Char, at this moment, was already preparing the edition of Le Marteau sans maître, into which he would incorporate the poem “Artine.” He had published nothing since L’action de la justice est éteinte, in 1931, in a confidential edition of 100 copies that Lacan almost certainly did not know, unlike Artine, which had marked its time and minds, evidently including Lacan’s. In René Char’s library, “one finds Les Essais de psychanalyse by Freud, the Psychopathologie de la vie quotidienne, and Le Rêve et son interprétation, abundantly proving how far psychoanalysis was from being unknown to Char […]. Char gives himself over to the magic of encounters, fruits of objective chance, to the enumerations by association of images of Artine, and in particular submits to the practice of the account of the dream” (Daniel Cordier, Dictionnaire Char). In this regard, let us cite the tale “Eaux-mères,” written during that same spring of 1933. A dreamlike tale without other equivalent in Char’s poetry. Coincidence?
“A few copies of this reissue can still be found on the market, though it remains very rare (fewer than fifty copies have been recorded). This rarity of copies is explained not only by the limited print run of the edition, which cannot have exceeded 100 to 200 copies, a majority of them put back on sale with the mention” (note by Librairie Le Feu Follet, for the Sigmund Freud copy, April 2025): these copies remained available for a long time at the publisher’s, until Jacques Lacan decided to buy them back from him… in order to destroy them. This was in 1952, the moment when he agreed to take Didier Anzieu into analysis. The now-grown son of Marguerite Pantaine-Anzieu, the subject of his thesis twenty years earlier — and this without informing him! “It was, perhaps, at the moment when he was challenged by Didier Anzieu that Jacques Lacan bought back from his publisher the remaining copies of his thesis, twenty years after its publication” (Marcel Turbiaux, “Le fils d’Aimée,” Bulletin de psychologie, 2000).
A census of the copies that are not inscribed is difficult to maintain, given that they are complicated to identify. For what this count is worth, we have recorded only three for those of the first state, against some fifteen for those of the second.
To date, then, 24 inscribed copies are recorded, with the following dates and recipients:
23 October 1932, to Alfred and Émilie Lacan: “à Papa et à Maman, ce grand ouvrage de celui qui reste – quelque part en eux et quelque part en lui – leur petit garçon. Jacquot. Ce 23 octobre 32” (private collection);
24 October 1932, to J.R. Cuel: “à Cuel, dont la personnalité scientifique me fut d’abord prônée par notre maître Trénel, et dont la rencontre ne m’a pas déçu, en signe de très particulière sympathie. Jacques Lacan. Ce 24 oct. 32” (Le Feu Follet, 2020);
24 October 1932, to Pierre Migault: “À mon camarade et ami Pierre Migault, en souvenir de dix ans. Ce 24 oct. 32” (Pierre Bergé, 22 November 2011, lot 111);
25 October 1932, to Dr. Pierre Verret: “à Pierre Verret, en souvenir d’une collaboration, J. Lacan, le 25 octobre 1932,” with an autograph letter enclosed (Librairie Walden, cat. 14, 2008; private collection);
25 October 1932, to Dr. Marguerite Badonnel: “À Mademoiselle le Docteur Badonnel, dont je n’oublie pas qu’elle fut l’initiatrice en un des « cercles » de notre science. Jacques Lacan, ce 25 oct. 32” (Librairie Walden, June 2025);
30 October 1932: “À Colette et Emmanuel Chaumié, en souvenir d’un temps de commune solution de nos épreuves particulières : quand je défendis ma thèse, tenaient encore les f…taises. Mais quand j’advins à la clinique, ce fut la fin de la clique. Très amicalement, Jacques Lacan. Ce 30 oct 32” (Mimesis Books, Lacan & Freud, 2024, no. 1);
3 November 1932, to Dr. Sophie Morgenstern: “À Madame le docteur Morgenstein, en hommage respectueux, ce 3 nov. 32” (Librairie Walden, cat. 25, 2014, no. 75; Mimesis Books, Lacan & Freud, 2024, no. 2);
17 November 1932, to Marcelle and Guillaume de Tarde: “à Marcelle et à Guillaume de Tarde, qui se partagent mon coeur et mon esprit. Jacques Lacan, ce 17 Nov. 1932” (Librairie Walden, cat. 22, 2011, no. 123; private collection);
20 November 1932, to Sacha Nacht: “au Docteur Sacha Nacht, en témoignage de mon amitié. Jacques Lacan, ce 20 Nov. 1932” (Giquello, March 2026, lot 307);
22 November 1932, to Marie Bonaparte: “À S.A.R. la princesse Georges de Grèce, en témoignage de ma respectueuse admiration. J. Lacan, ce 22 nov. 32” (Binoche et Giquello, 19 November 2021, lot 153);
26 November 1932, to Angelo Louis Marie Hesnard: “à Monsieur le Professeur Hesnard en signe de ma respectueuse sympathie. Jacques Lacan. Ce 26 Nov. 32” (Kâ-Mondo, 30 October 2019, lot 284; then Alain de Mijolla);
25 November 1932, to Dr. Claire Popp-Vogt: “à mademoiselle le Docteur P-.Vogt, en hommage, amical et respectueux. Jacques Lacan, le 25 nov. [19]32” (Librairie Walden, cat. 23, 2012; private collection);
3 January 1933, to Sigmund Freud: “Au Professeur Sigmund Freud, père de la nouvelle psychiatrie, à laquelle je voudrais avoir contribué un peu par cet ouvrage, bien que j’aie dû m’y exprimer trop souvent en fonction de l’ancienne. En témoignage de mon immense admiration, Jacques Lacan le 3 janvier 32 [sic, for 1933]” (Le Feu Follet, April 2025);
20 January 1933, an inscription to an unidentified recipient (incomplete and altered inscription), on a copy printed under the aegis of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris (Bibliothèque Henri Ey, Hôpital Sainte-Anne, Paris) which we have just consulted;
23 January 1933, to Dr. Maurice Martin-Sisteron (Librairie Walden, copy seen in 2012, private collection);
23 January 1933, to Dr. Jean Picard: “en témoignage d’une amitié fondée sur la plus profonde estime intellectuelle. 23 janvier 33” (Kahn et associés, 20 April 2011, lot 71);
23 January 1933, to Dr. Ernst Kretschmer: “An Herrn Professor Dr. Kretschmer. Mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung von einem unbekannten, zum Danke verpflichteten Schüler, Jacques Lacan den 23. Jan. 33” [To Herr Professor Dr. Kretschmer. With my most sincere regards, from an unknown and grateful student] (cited by Le Feu Follet, 2025, op. cit.);
24 February 1933, to Lise and Paul Deharme: “À Lise et Paul Deharme, ce 24 fév. 33” (Giquello, 1 June 2016, lot 82);
30 March 1933, to René Char: “À Monsieur René Char, au poëte d’Artine, très sympathiquement, J. Lacan, 30 mars 1933,” on a copy of the printing bearing the “chef de clinique” mention (Librairie Walden, June 2025);
9 July 1933, to Marcel Boll: “À Marcel Boll, en signe de courtoise contradiction Jacques Lacan ce 9 juillet 33” (Le Feu Follet, cat. December 2011, no. 153); first-state copy;
September 1933, to Dr. Eugène Minkowski, on a copy of the printing bearing the “chef de clinique” mention (Librairie La Nef des fous, cat. June 2011, inscription not described);
21 October 1933, to one Arnould: “À Arnould. Cet essai ambitieux, Jacques Lacan, Ce 21 octobre 1933, mieux vaut tard… et pardon,” on a copy of the printing bearing the “chef de clinique” mention (Bibliothèque Julien Bogousslavsky; Bibliothèque Pierre Bergé, VI, July 2022, lot 1528);
undated [1952], to Maurice Henry: “un peu de Maurice Henry aurait fait du bien à mon ‘Aimée’, beaucoup de Maurice Henry tout court l’aurait sauvée. Jacques Lacan Vingt ans après. Que personne ne sorte et que tout le monde signe [other signatures including Sylvia Bataille]” (cited by Le Feu Follet, 2025, op. cit.); printing unknown;
undated, to Gaston Ferdière, inscription not described (sale, 2001).
Jacques Sédat, “Lacan et la psychiatrie, Lacan et les psychiatres,” Topique, no. 88, pp. 37–46.