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Betty Milan, "Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
00:54:09
An interview with Betty Milan
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Hello and welcome to New Books in Psychoanalysis, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. My name is Matt Pjeknik, your host, and I am delighted today to welcome Betty Millen, whose new book, Analyzed by Lacan, was published last fall by Bloomsbury. Betty Millen is a Lacanian psychoanalyst practicing in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Originally trained as a psychiatrist, her encounter with the thinking of Jacques Lacan proved decisive, and she eventually undertook analysis with him in France between 1973 and 1978. In addition to practicing psychoanalysis, she's also a very prolific writer in various forms, including novels, plays, articles and interviews. Beyond writing, she has taught at the Freudian School of Rio de Janeiro, which is an association she co founded in 1975 for disseminating Lacan's theories in Brazil. She has spoken at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and New York School of the Arts, and she is also recognized for her research into Brazilian Carnival culture. Her analysis with Lacan has been an especially generative experience for her creatively, having previously inspired a novel, the Parrot and the Doctor, a play, Goodbye Doctor, and a film adaptation of that play in 2021, Adieu Lacan. It served as inspiration again during the beginning of the COVID pandemic, when Betty decided it was finally time to compose a prose testimony about her analysis entitled why Lacan. It is his personal nonfiction account, along with the text of the play Goodbye Doctor that together comprise her 27th book and the one that we're here to talk about today, analyzed by Lacan. Betty, welcome to New Books in Psychoanalysis. I'm so excited to have you here.
- [03:08]
C
So am I. I loved your presentation. Let's go on.
- [03:14]
B
So my first question for you is a question that we begin all of our interviews here with. And we begin by acknowledging that because of the unconscious, full self knowledge is impossible. We're divided subjects all the way. But to the extent that it's possible to know what motivated you to write this particular book and why.
- [03:41]
C
Now look, we were in the pandemic 2020. I could not. I live in France and in Brazil. And I could not go to see my. My. The son of my. My son, my little son, because of the pandemia. And my companions said to me, look, it's time you finally write what happened exactly with Pleco. So I was closed at home. I had the photos of my. My little boy in front of me, and I started writing. And I had a friend that had done her analysis with me that came once a week so that we could work together on the book. In three months it was ready and in Portuguese to start with and published. And then my French editor wanted to publish it. I also worked in the translation with her. And then I had the chance to have it published by Bloomsbury. In fact, I had already written. The trip started when I was 50 years ago, when I met Lacan. And it started with a translation of his seminar. That was the first time I was writing about what had to do with Lacko. And I did the translation because I couldn't stand living in France without having my language, my own language. So that was a way to work with him. At the same time, have Portuguese language. After that I wrote a novel, La Conspirat. I worked during five years in this novel because I was not ready to write a novel. And it took me a lot of time. I wanted to be very, very truthful to the way Lacan worked, but at the same time to my own fantasy. So it's that there's a lot of imagination, interior monologues, wandering around Paris, because Paris. At the same time I discovered Lacan and myself. I was discovering Paris and. And then I wrote this novel. When I came to Brazil, I came to Bris. After my analysis, I came back to Brazil, I founded a school and. Well, and then I wrote the novel. It took Me, years, many years after, I decided to write a play, because I wanted the dialogues to be very clear. And his way of working with Seliema, the heroine is called Seliema, and it is not. It has a big reason for that. To start with, Seyrimma is a bird. And in a way, I have been a bird in my life. I point forth and back, and I like this way of living. And my ancestors had to immigrate from Lebanon to Brazil. I'm the little daughter of immigrants. Well, besides that, Serie Ema has two words in each that are very important. The word ser, it's the verb that means to be in Portuguese. And the word ema has to do with emin, that means mother in Arab. In Arab language. So the whole problem of this heroine is that she cannot become a mother. She cannot become a mother because she cannot identify with her women, ancestors. And these things are very, very incredible because this name came to me without. You know, I didn't think about it, I didn't. It came to me. And then while I was writing, I discovered that Emma had to do with Emmy. That means mother. And the central problem of this young. This young woman is to become a mother. And that is what, like Lacan, made it possible for me to become a mother, to. Refuse xenophobia and to accept my origins. So it was a very good analysis. And when I had already written a fiction, a novel and a play, I was able to write a memoir without having to speak about myself. I only told my story in order to show how Lacan worked, because I realized that his theory was well known abroad because of the translations, the publications. But his clinical practice was not known. And it was really. It was so. So, how do you say in English, efficacy. So efficient. And it was efficient because he had discovered something very simple, in fact.
- [10:26]
B
So I want to ask about. I want to ask about that. And I love. I love the richness of the name Seriema and this idea of you as a bird. It occurs to me that not only you know the migration that is part of your family story, and not only going back and forth between France and Brazil, but it's also part of your work that you, via translation and through school and through. And through your. You're writing that like a bird, you carry seeds of Lacan back to Brazil to help grow something then.
- [11:06]
C
So where was I? Well, I was. The first thing I wanted to say is that I wanted his practice to be known. And in fact, there was very little texts written about this practice. And, well, he turned psychoanalysis upside down. When he discovered that if you interpret the signification of a discourse, of a speech, you will. Resistance will be bigger. And then it would be much better if he cut the session at a point where he thought to be interesting and if he let the analyzer do the interpretation after he had cut the session. So that made him work, not work anymore with a fixed time. He did not work with Konos, the time that passes, but with Kairos, Kairos is the moment of opportunity you have to seize. So he cut the session that was not necessarily short. It was a variable time. People used to say that he shortened the session in order to earn more money. It is not true. So I try to explain this as well as I can in my different works, and particularly in the memoir.
- [13:13]
B
And I imagine as well dramatizing the clinical sessions with him in the play someone who's, you know, reading the text, but even more so watching it or watching the film can have that experience right there. They're having the experience of seeing what the cut looks like and feels like because it's happening in real time, so to speak, to the character.
- [13:39]
C
Yeah. And, you know, one of Lacon's way of working was to be very dramatic. Dramatical. He was. He could. He could say things that were very touching to you. You know, when I arrived in Paris, he. He says to me, but what are you doing here? You have. You have gone through the ocean, you have. As if you were going to discover America. And in fact, I discovered America because I went to Paris. So he used to. It was very dramatical, his way of working. And he used to transform your personal story in an epic store as if you were going to discover America. I was immediately turned up into a heroine, like.
- [14:46]
B
Like a play. It's elevating everyday material and making it into very dramatic, epic material.
- [14:54]
C
That's it. And this is. This was his way of doing psychoanalysis. That irritated very much the analysts of the International Society of Psychoanalysis. But everything had a reason to be. It was not. It was not arbitrary. You know, there was a reason to behave in this way. And he also. He also did it the way he did because of his approach to linguistic linguistics, the knowledge of linguistic and the importance he gave to the significant and not the signification, because he knew that a significant can only be interpreted through its relationship with the whole. The whole Shen. The whole. The significance to which it enters. And only the person that speaks can interpret. Freud knew that because when he wrote the Interpretation of the Dream in the end of the 19th century, he already asked people to associate. He only interprets it when the dreamer had associated, had made the relationship with the other significance of his life. So Albince is very interested, very interesting. I think I have not said everything I could have said in this book, but that's.
- [17:06]
B
That we adhere to, right? It's impossible to say it all. There's always something that has to be left unsaid.
- [17:11]
C
Yeah.
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B
I think it's striking that you emphasize the theatricality of Lacan style and how dramatic it can be. Clearly, you know, as this book showcases, you are both analyst, clinician and playwright, a dramatist. And so, as I was reading, I was curious about your own relationship between theater and psychoanalysis. And I wondered how theater impacts the way you work or the way that you practice. Is it similar to Lacan?
- [17:51]
C
It's not the same, but it's similar. Yes, it's similar. In fact, I was interested in. I was interested in theater already when I was a child. I was writing for theater and I had my cousins and my friends doing my plays. And then I went. Before meeting Lacan, I worked with Moreno, you know, this psychodramatist. I'm not great. The founder of Psychodramo, that has a school, I don't know if it still exists, upstate New York, in Beacon. And I went to Beacon and I studied with Zerka Moreno, his wife, because he was already very old man and I was an auxiliary ego. And I went with Zerka Moreno to the theater they had in New York, where they did public psychodrama. So I was also trained in psychodrama. And then I started writing plays in Brazil for the theater. In fact, I wrote seven plays. I would have written much more if I had a theater, because it's very difficult to have them performed. But this play, Goodbye Doctor, that has been published by Bloomsbury, I worked in it for a long time. It was first presented in Paris, then in Brazil, and then I worked again in it with Robert McKee. Perhaps you know who Robert McKee is. He is the great teacher of storytelling. And there it is. It's movie now. And perhaps it will be performed in New York. I very much. It's. It's so much easier to write theater than to write novels.
- [20:20]
B
The movie is. Is wonderful. If our listeners have not had a chance to track it down and to find it. It's. It's the first way that I came into contact with your work. And it's so striking. We were talking for a few minutes before we started the interview, and I said one reason I really wanted to Talk with you about this book and the play and the movie is because the. The dramatic text had an effect on me. That reading Lacan and studying Lacan and talking about Lacan and being in Lacan analysis, that all of these things have not had. There was a kind of a very effective immediacy about what it might have felt like to be in the room with him, but also sort of to observe in a way that most people never will, never can what he might have actually worked like. We don't get so many glimpses of that in his theoretical writing.
- [21:28]
C
Look, this was the result of three things. Decades of working in writing. You see decades in English, the dce. Years and years and years of practicing and writing. The encounter with Robert McKee. I remember when I met him, he said. He said, make it be bigger than life. I worked during seven hours with him in London. I remember that. It was really great. He's such a great teacher. And then meeting Richard Leeds, because Richard was so, so accurate and his adaptation is so good. Perhaps you should interview him too, because there's a lot he can say. He was working with Paula Miel. This is how this. Huh. But this is how we met. I went to Apricot to do a conference. And then after the conference, Richard Dietz directed the lecture of the play and he loved it. And he said it has to become a movie. I was very frightened and I thought, what's going to happen? And then finally, well, it became a movie. Exactly what I thought it had to. What I think it had to be. Because his inspiration was Jeanne d' Arc of Dre. That was. He's a very dramatic called film. And he was interested in the drama of transference because transference is very dramatic. And he. The way he did it was really good. And the performance of David Patrick Kelly and Ismenia Mendis was beautiful. And now he did another film that is called Vienna about Freud and Hitler. It's not shown yet, but it's very interesting. You know, this is a group, very special group that had much to do with Alain Die Valle. I don't know if you know Alain d', Aveux, but he was the. The. The analyze and of Lacan that Lacan liked best. He used. I used to invite him to speak in his seminar. Very, very bright analyst. And he was a friend of Paola Mieli. So that's the way we all met.
- [24:43]
B
Speaking of opera coup. But opera coup, not as in the association here in New York, but opera coup, as in the clinical idea. You know something? Yes. So yes, Something happens, and the significance of it really becomes clear, you know, only afterward, right. In. In the analysis. I was thinking about Apru as I was reading your book, because, as we've established, right, Your analysis was the basis for the novel, basis for the play, and then a memoir. And I thought, there's something really interesting here. Whenever we have the opportunity to go back and really revisit something, we sometimes discover something new about it, right? We realize afterward, oh, there was something new that I hadn't realized before, was something that made this very significant, that wasn't, you know, present to me or conscious to me before. And so I wondered, having the chance to go back and write this memoir about your analysis with Lacan, what. What, if anything, you might have discovered for the first time or realized and thought, oh, I actually had not thought about that or realized that before.
- [26:05]
C
Perhaps I realized that I. I had grasped something, you know, I finally. I found. I finally found was what was essential. And you have to get a distance in order to discover what is essential. Don't we cannot forget that the central concert of the practice and also of Lacan's style is nachtraglish. That means apricot. It is because he really believed in apricot that he could cut the session and let time work. And that changed completely the conception that the clinical practice and also the way of writing the theory. I do think that it was okay that Lacan worked in a very. Wrote in a very unintelligible way because he had to make the enigma. Is that the word in English, Enigma?
- [27:47]
B
Yes, that's it.
- [27:50]
C
Enter in the psychoanalytic scene again. But people do not. Should not imitate back home, that's the last thing he would want. It makes me think about what Manet used to say when they asked him to teach painting. He said, the only thing I can teach is that black is a color. So Lacan did not have the way he transmitted the theory had nothing to do with the way teachers do it and influences do it and communication does it. Nothing to do. And he knew how important it is to. To. How can I say this? Not to lose time, but at the same time to let time do the work of knowledge, of understanding. He taught us not to lose time.
- [29:11]
B
To read his writing.
- [29:13]
C
The reasons why we didn't stay 45 minutes in a session, because people can. Can sleep during a session. He made you work. When you said, I could say, there's nothing I had to say today. Try your best.
- [29:34]
B
Keep going, keep going.
- [29:36]
C
Shama.
- [29:39]
B
You said, you know, of course you cannot imitate Lacan. But I. I also wondered, I mean, how it is what your experience is like as you do your own practice. Because there are many analysts in the world whose names are not so recognizable as Lacan's. And I imagine that if I had had an analysis with Lacan, whose influence is so profound on our work, I would be very tempted, you know, I would find it hard to resist just doing it exactly as. As the teacher taught me. And so I wonder what your experience of that is like and how you manage to separate yourself from that so that you can work in your own way.
- [30:27]
C
Look, perhaps because I am not French, I worked in France and in French, but I'm not French, so I couldn't do it the way he did it. And it's so ridiculous. I get so mad when I unders. When I hear psychoanalysis, Brazilian psychoanalysis, speaking Portuguese as if it were French. Each language has its own way of doing, and each language is a culture. And Lacan was so smart. I remember one of my. One of my sessions when I told him, I'm going back to Brazil because I lost my. My eye, you know, this African fetish.
- [31:27]
B
That protected me moment in the play and in your account, this moment when you lose this or the character or you loses. Yes, this. This protective eye. And it's very. It's very unsettling, very distressing.
- [31:43]
C
Go on, send a telegram. Tell people to send you another one. A telegram. And he became. He became. He. He was an analyst that was able to. To behave as if he were an African master. You know, he was so. He was so. So little dogmatic. And he did not like dogmatism, not at all. And unfortunately, many of his students became very dogmatic and imitated him and censored invention, because psychoanalysis cannot exist without invention. Impossible.
- [32:45]
B
So for you, was it. Was it easy to resist dogma from the beginning, when you started working on your own? Was it. Was it easy to say, okay, that is the con, but I'm in Brazil and I'm doing something different here. Or was it a process to sort of.
- [33:02]
C
I had to. When I came to Brazil, in. In the end of the 70s, I had. I had to reinvent. While I was translating, I had to reinvent the concepts in Portuguese. So that immediately changed the way I looked at theory. Besides that, when I came to Brazil, I. Just. Because I was going to discover America, as he said, I realized that there was a very rich culture to discover and that I could not stay closed in my office. So I started to listen to what the people that do carnival. Carnival here is not something small or unimportant. It's a miracle. It's a great street opera. It's very, very rich. And I started and I realized I had to go and listen to them in the favelas. I had a bodyguard and a little. We used to have. We didn't have a telephone yet. We had something to. In register the. We'll speak up the people. And so I worked very hard on this, listening to. I was discovering Brazil because when you come from Sao Paulo, you know, you come from a universe that has little to do with the popular culture of this country. So to start with, we did that. The school. I found it in Rio, not in Sao Paulo. In Sao Paulo I had not been admitted. When I got here, there was no place for me, not in the university, not my clinic, nowhere. So I said, okay, let's do it in Rio. And well, but when I, you know, there's a lot of dogmatism in the psychoanalytical institution. When I wrote the Parrot, it was sanctioned in France. Lacan's daughter that was waiting for my novel said to me, it's too Brazilian. So it took years before the book could be. Could be published in. In France. And well, where did the. Well, yes, I don't want to speak more about that. But there's a lot of dogmatism and censorship in psychoanalysis. But here in Brazil we have very good school, very good school that is called. Freudian, the Freudian body. And it has a lot of relationship. It has relationship with Apicu also, but a lot of relationship with France and the rest of Latin America. And it's very serious. Because what can we. What can we. What knowledge do we have to understand what's happening in the world besides psychoanalysis? Yesterday I was invited to a conference done by Brazilian ambassador, very bright one. And he was comparing. He was speaking about the wars that our going on. And he spoke about. He established the difference between tension and controversy. When there is tension, you cannot solve it. Look what's happening in or it. When you have contradicts controversy, you have the possibility of negotiation and solution, but you cannot. So he was. When he spoke about. He established this difference. I realized that tension has to do with potion and controversy with symbolization. The only way to pacify the world is to educate people, because symbolization becomes possible. So that's a relationship I could establish between the world history and the subjective history. And that's something we have to work on. In my opinion.
- [38:24]
B
I think it's something we need to do a lot of work on. I think you're so right. In the same way that psychoanalysis has to be invented with each and every patient that comes through the door. So too, it makes sense that the psychoanalysis in France cannot be the same thing as psychoanalysis in Brazil. It won't be the same thing as psychoanalysis in America. I'm curious a little bit more about Brazilian culture.
- [38:54]
C
You.
- [38:55]
B
When I saw you speak in the fall at Apricu and earlier here, you speak so fondly, so warmly about Carnival culture as an essential and very beautiful part of Brazilian culture. And so.
- [39:08]
C
Yeah, go on, go on.
- [39:10]
B
And so I wondered what.
- [39:13]
C
What.
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B
What Carnival has taught you about psychoanalysis or how Carnival has affected. Yeah. How you had to invent psychoanalysis in Brazil.
- [39:25]
C
Well, psychoanalysis made me realize that Carnival is not only the day of oblivion, as it has always been considered. Because I heard what the artists of the Carnival said. I realized that through Carnival, Brazil can remember its own story. Each school tells a part of the story of Brazil. So it has this symbolic function of introducing people in their own history. And each year it's completely different. So it has to all the allegories and fantasies and everything disappears. It has to be recreated each year. Brazilians, the Brazilian television has not yet completely understand how. How important it is. How. How. How. It's a very rich form of art. People have not yet understood completely that. And I couldn't spend my life working on Carnival otherwise I would. Because besides being. Besides its symbolic strength, it's very democratic. I mean, in these three days, everybody. Everybody participates. And the luxury is not the luxury of money, it's the luxury of imagination. It's the only. This. That. It's the only counter. Best counter culture I know. And it's.
- [41:41]
B
It's here so time for the democracy of the imagination. An imagination that everybody can access.
- [41:50]
C
And yet it's very. It's a very big discipline. You know, each school has about 4,000, 5,000 members. They don't rehearse, but the day they have to make the exhibition, they are all there at the good time and they. They do the exhibition exactly how it has to be done. It's a bit. A bit like Spanish dance, you know, the. That is part of the culture and so. And so and so lasting, long lasting each year. It's great again, I always do. I see it again and again and again.
- [42:43]
B
You had said earlier that, you know, the work of. Of symbolization, of trying to bring, you know, more new knowledge about. To whether to address, you know, Controversy or to help increase understanding in other ways is something we have a lot of work to do with. There's a lot more symbolization to be done. And it made me wonder about your. Your current work. What do you think?
- [43:14]
C
I just put a. No, that. That has to do with the pandemia and the negationism. It's a novel. It will be published next year because this year I. I'm just working on, you know, gonna be the Olympic Games in France. And so the. The newspaper I work for, because I'm. I always work for the newspaper, asked me to write about Paris. I love Paris. So I'm going to write about it again and then I will work again on the novel. This year is. This year is. I'm resting a little bit because I had an accident. I'm well now, but I broke my right hand. Not the hand, this part. And it was very hard to overcome that because the right hand of a writer is his soul. But it's okay. I have had good people working with me and I can write now and. But this year I'm going to concentrate on France and also because the relationship between France and Brazil is going to be intensified because of climate change problem. You know, Macron came here and they wish to work together on this, on this climate question. And so. Well, I'm going to be available for what's going to happen in political area.
- [45:01]
B
You are like a bird that keeps singing. It sounds like you don't stop writing. There's always more writing to be done and more. More song to be sung.
- [45:11]
C
That's it. That's how we. That's how it's good to live.
- [45:17]
B
You said something.
- [45:19]
C
What are you writing now?
- [45:22]
B
Oh, that's a great question. In fact, things percolate around in my brain, but I'm not actively writing anything at the moment. I'm just in the moment of. Of thinking, I suppose there is opera coup forms, cartels, working cartels. And I'm going to be participating in an upcoming cartel that will be. It is going to be about the diagnostic edge of psychosis, thinking about psychotic structure and how it works and some of the limits and contours of psychosis. And it's, you know, one of the intentions that, you know, in the working cartel that you produce some writing that comes out of that. So I imagine something is going to come of that.
- [46:17]
C
Contribution of Laon to the study of psychosis is. Psychosis is very good, Very great, isn't it? Have you read? You have read?
- [46:27]
B
I have read. I have read. Seminar 3 and other things here and there in terms of psychosis. Yeah. Is there. Is there a writing of his that in particular with regard to psychosis?
- [46:40]
C
His thesis, of his doctor thesis, his PhD about his first book, the Psychotic Patient. I remember attending to his work in the hospital once a week. There was some of his students and he interviewed a patient in the hospital and it was very interesting. Once he said, this is a Lacanian psychosis.
- [47:26]
B
What did he mean, a Lacanian psychosis?
- [47:29]
C
Truly, I can't. I don't remember exactly. But try to read his first book about his. This case.
- [47:37]
B
Thank you for the recommendation. I'm. I'm. I'm certain it will probably be part of what we read and talk about in the group together.
- [47:44]
C
I think it has been translated into English. No, everything has been translated.
- [47:49]
B
No, an awful lot. And yet it seems like still things, you know, trickle out. New things appear here. There's sometimes still, you know, ideas in France about when we're. When Americans are ready for certain parts of the.
- [48:05]
C
There is the work about two sisters that were psychotic and how. And how the relationship between brothers and sisters can help psychosis, too.
- [48:31]
B
The Papin sisters.
- [48:33]
C
Yeah.
- [48:36]
B
There's the famous Jean Genet play, the Maids, which is also about the Peplon sisters.
- [48:43]
C
Yeah. So go ahead. Relationship between psychoanalysis and literature isn't very. I think one cannot exist without the other.
- [48:58]
B
With that in mind, I suppose, and maybe it's a good pivot point. But the next interview that I'll be doing for the New Books in Psychoanalysis podcast is a book that is exactly about that. It is about the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature. And there's a central argument that they really. One can't exist without the other.
- [49:23]
C
They help to the link. I want to s. Us.
- [49:28]
B
I absolutely will. I absolutely will. The book is called the Unwritten Enlightenment. The author's Nathan Gorlic. But I will. I will send you. And I will send you the interview as well.
- [49:41]
C
Enlightenment. Yes. There's. In France, there is Dominique Marat that works with psychoanalysis and literature and that has written a beautiful book on Lacau and Meket. And he is interested in what he calls the interior discourse, which in my opinion is not identical to the interior monologue. In analysis, you have the interior discourse. The interior monologue is what a writer does. And, well, there's. There's much I could say about that, but I think we're not going to do that now.
- [50:41]
B
We are, in fact, going to have to cut. This might be the opportune moment for us since we are at time for today, but I want to thank you so much for coming and speaking with me today. The author is Betty Millen and the book is analyzed by Lacan. So thank you so much. I am Matt Pjechnik, your host here at New Books and Psychoanalysis. And thank you so much for listening today. We'll see you again soon.