Wittgenstein's Folly

by Françoise Davoine, William J. Hurst (Translator)

Wittgenstein's Folly is a translation of Françoise Davoine's La Folie Wittgenstein. "Folly" has many meanings, referring to the "madness" of the fool, as well as to the madness of what we call the "mentally ill." "Folly" is linked with the fools of medieval plays, with the fools of Renaissance satires, and with the folly that speaks as a woman in Erasmus's Praise of Folly. In this book by Francoise Davoine, "folly" often refers to the madness of those isolated by historical catastrophes that have not been processed across generations, and which can only be studied by exploring the fields of madness, by finding ways to hear Folly herself speaking. The title does not refer specifically to the madness or folly of Wittgenstein himself. Wittgenstein's Folly is about psychoanalytic experience, and specifically about the madness or folly that comes to reside, in a way, in what Françoise Davoine refers to as a "psychotic transference." Françoise Davoine is a psychoanalyst trained in the 1970s at Lacan's École freudienne de Paris. With advanced degrees in the Classics and in French Literature, she obtained a doctorate in sociology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), at the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux (Center for the Study of Social Movements), led by Alain Touraine. She and her husband, Jean-Max Gaudilliere, have led a weekly seminar (Madness and the Social Link) at that Center for over thirty years. Françoise Davoine is convinced that psychosis is a field of research for both analyst and analysand, in which the events of History, or perhaps pieces of those events, which could not be processed by the individual or even by human beings as a group, can be identified, recognized, and finally put in a place where they can be fully experienced within a symbolic framework created by social links; i.e., with others, within a social world.

298 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[L. Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in English in 2009, and republished October 25, 2023. I borrowed a 2012 edition via interlibrary loan on the cusp of the book's republication, and found it a jaw-dropping, immensely interesting read. It's not written as an academic work (although it is extensively footnoted), but as a travelogue-like series of discussions and interactions between the author, her colleagues, her mentors, her patients, and various imaginary characters, including Wittgenstein, who intervenes in many of her conversations with these people and is sometimes audible and visible not only to her but to them. An amalgam of memoir, fiction, memory play, and meditation on reality, history, psychotic transference, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma, Wittgenstein's Folly includes many intriguing clinical vignettes enacting the propositions that "𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘺𝘮𝘣𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭" and "𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬... 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵."