ABSTRACT
In order to provide grounding and validation for psychoanalysts' argument, they will visit ten localities situated along the Via Regia and read them through Sigmund Freud’s bi(bli)ography. Already early Chinese thinkers held the study of geography in great esteem for its interpretative possibilities. It was especially valued for enhancing one’s understanding of history and the classics. Returning to psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts’ proposed West-Eastern journey involves a series of regressions. To begin with, regression has a regredient character as it is moving backwards from (pre)conscious to unconscious systems. Three doubled concepts will assist in psychoanalysts’ interpretative incursion: orientalism proper or the narcissism of eurocentric difference; orientalist binaries or West-Eastern splitting in the process of defence; and self-orientalisation or identification with the royal and imperial aggressor. With these three “doubled” concepts as their only guide, they begin their journey “into the darkness” of the early history of psychoanalysis in Paris, the city of lights.
