ABSTRACT
Countertransference was a phenomenon known to Didier Anzieu—he experimented it facing Lacan who was his analyst until they broke up violently; Anzieu could not forgive that Lacan refused to divulge that he had treated his mother, the famous “Aimée” of his doctoral dissertation. It is time to read Anzieu closely (most of his books are out of print or not even translated into English) as Anneleen Masschelein contends in “Why Didier Anzieu Now? Stretching the Shared Skin of the Work of Art.” Her essay begins with the concept of creativity as rethought by Anzieu and examines a number of his theses, including the “Skin-ego.” Anzieu’s The Body of the Work analyzes literary creativity as the constitution of a second body. He applied this concept to an author he kept dialoguing with, Samuel Beckett. Surveying his entire career, Masschelein shows the unique relevance of Anzieu’s work, halfway between Freud reread by Lacan, an a British school with Melanie Klein, Winnicott, and Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, who were his main interlocutors. Anzieu knotted in an original manner the issues of affects, the drives, and the libidinal body.
