#MeToo Arrives in France

Today is one of those days when I am extra pleased with myself for having taken my leave of French psychoanalysis. I date my departure to the early 1990s. I explained my reasoning in two books, one entitled Saving Face; the other called The Last Psychoanalyst.

I had trained in Paris with Jacques Lacan and had been practicing in New York for nearly fifteen years. As it happened, I was part of a movement, though, in fairness, looking at it from the outside, it was more cult than movement.

Over the last few days I have been trying to digest an expose about French analysis, reported in Elle Magazine. The subject of the enquiry is one Gerard Miller, someone who occupies the summit of the international Lacanian movement. The cult leader, named Jacques-Alain Miller, is his brother.

I knew them both, the latter better than the former. The latter was Lacan’s son-in-law. Young Gerard was also said to be the psychoanalyst of one Carla Bruni, wife of former French president Nicolas Sarcozy.

Over the years I have developed a decidedly negative opinion of both of them. I have not had contact with either of them for some three decades.

Anyway, Elle magazine has discovered that Gerard Miller used his position and used his ability hypnotize women in order to assault and to rape them. Miller denies all charges. Some of the events date to the early 1990s, so the statute of limitations might have run out. 

The magazine also printed a charge against French film director, Benoit Jacquot, a close personal friend of the Miller family. It accuse him of raping a fourteen year old actress, by name of Juliette Godreche. He is also accused of seducing other underage actresses, namely Virginie Ledoyen and Isild Lebesco.

I will not share the sordid details about Gerard Miller’s actions, though apparently it did not happen just once. I have no direct knowledge about any of these cases, but I do find the accounts reported by Elle to be persuasive.

A publication called Mediapart has brought us up to date on the fallout from the Elle story:

Ten women, of which three are minors, accused the famous psychoanalyst of having sexually aggressed them or of having having had an inappropriate behavior with them between 1995 and 2016. One of them filed charges. Gerard Miller insisted that he never “constrained anyone.”

Strangely, it seems to be all about hypnosis. When I was in Paris, in the mid 1970s, no one showed very much interest in hypnosis. Apparently, it became fashionable later on. Even though I have no information about the accusations recounted, I will note that I recently heard tell of a very similar situation in France, where a woman was raped under hypnosis.

As of now, the French authorities are investigating the charges. One must notice that a great French culture, the Marquis de Sade, was a serial rapist. He did not hypnotize, but he drugged women before raping them.

As it happened, de Sade’s mother-in- law turned him in and had him consigned to a famous prison, the Bastille. On July 14, 1789, citizens of Paris rose up and liberated the prisoners who were in the Bastille, among them, the Marquis. 

More than a few French intellectuals concluded that the meaning of the French Revolution involved liberating repressed sexual impulses.

For now the story continues. It sounds like the #MeToo movement has arrived in France. It could not have happened to a nicer group of psychoanalysts!

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