Fighting Melancholia

Francoise Davoine obtained an 'Agregation' in classics (French literature, Latin and Greek) in 1966, followed by a doctorate in sociology in 1981, before becoming a psychoanalyst. She worked for thirty years as a psychoanalyst in public psychiatric hospitals in France, and as an external consultant and is currently in private practice. She was a Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Movements, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, where she and Jean-Max Gaudilliere conducted a weekly seminar on 'Madness and the Social Link'. She has also made numerous presentations at the Austen Riggs Center in Massachusetts (USA), as well as elsewhere in the US, in England, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Switzerland. Dr Davoine is the author of many articles and books, including 'La Folie Wittgenstein', 'Mother Folly', and 'History Beyond Trauma' (with Jean Max Gaudilliere).

• ABOUT THE AUTHORWARNING TO THE READERCHAPTER ONEAndante! CHAPTER TWOCervantes, an old warrior CHAPTER THREEPTSD: post-traumatic son Don Quixote (the post-traumatic son of Cervantes)CHAPTER FOURFirst sally, first sessionsCHAPTER FIVESecond sally towards the psychotherapy of trauma CHAPTER SIXWidening of the field of war and beyond CHAPTER SEVENDon Quixote becomes a psychoanalyst in the Sierra Morena CHAPTER EIGHTRegenerating the social link CHAPTER NINEA sombre affair CHAPTER TENHistory makes its entrance CHAPTER ELEVENFarewell to arms CHAPTER TWELVEBella ciao! ciao! ciao!REFERENCES INDEX

'By turns playful, ironic and fierce, Francoise Davoine's brilliantly Quixotic book moves back and forth from the clinical situation to literature and history, showing us what powerful resources the latter can bring to the work of clinical psychoanalysis. Lamenting the loss of the person in contemporary approaches to severe emotional disturbance, Davoine argues that trauma and psychosis go hand in hand, that in fact the deeply troubled patient is carrying out a mad research into family trauma cut out of the official narrative. It's her bold assertion that Cervantes knew this about his own life, and that his characters teach us what it takes to treat these personal catastrophes of history, lessons also brought to life in the stories - startling in their raw authenticity - of her patients. Davoine's advice that we take Don Quixote as our supervisor may both puzzle and amuse us, but she means it and she tells us why.'-- M. Gerard Fromm, PhD, Senior Consultant, Erikson Institute, Austen Riggs Center, and editor of A Spirit that Impels: Play, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis'When I approached this book, I asked myself: Should I try to understand the rationale for its writing? Look for a story behind the story? Piece together and trace the master plot? Find the hidden meaning? When all these attempts led nowhere, I realised that the only thing to do was to completely surrender myself to the reading, which was effortless despite abrupt changes in place and in time frames. The book is tightly held together by the resurfacing personal memories of a child of two, of events close to the end of World War Two. This child is the central narrating 'I', who creates the unity from which the book expands and branches out.'-- Dori Laub, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine'Francoise Davoine has an extraordinary capacity to connect mind, myth and technique to illuminate how we can understand and treat madness or melancholy. She writes with an intense intelligence, luminosity and wit - one of the few theoreticians whose works are literature in themselves.'-- Jane Ryan, Director of Confer, and author of How Does Psychotherapy Work?'In this remarkable book Francoise Davoine shows how literature is a site of madness as well as a source for its healing. Don Quixote is, in her reading, both madman and therapist, and Francoise Davoine herself, speaking as therapist, brilliantly draws for her healing inspiration on the legacy of her own traumatic past. A work of imagination, history, trauma, and life.'-- Cathy Caruth, author of Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History and Literature in the Ashes of History