Introduction

This book was not originally intended as a manual for doing psychotherapy, and yet it has inadvertently become one. That is, it traces the cultivation of a unique psychotherapy hybrid that consists of one part psychoanalysis and one part applied anthropology. In fact, there is a great deal of work the author has left for the people, the reader. Borel’s exceptional interest in the shared unconscious zone constituted by dreaming, culture, and artistic expression informed a perspective free from conventional psychoanalytic parameters. Many years after the treatment concluded, Bataille would join with Borel and others to form the Society of Collective Psychology. The scholarly, artistic, and personal exploration of human attitudes when faced with death would preoccupy Bataille for the rest of his life. In the spirit of the “applied analysis” undertaken in this book, it is organized into different parts based on the modalities of treatment the author adopted.