The Territories of Deconstruction 1984–1986 365
Ever since I’d attacked him, at the second Cerisy conference,
by unwisely comparing his ideas with those of Carl Gustav
Jung, Derrida had cold-shouldered me. At the meetings of
‘Confrontation’, every time I spoke, he did not conceal his irri-
tation. But the fi rst volume of Jacques Lacan and Co.* had been
published in 1982 and I was working on the second, in which
I felt that he would have an essential place: so we would need
to put this old quarrel behind us. At our fi rst meeting in Ris-
Orangis, in March 1985, he asked me how I’d be presenting him
in my book. I told him he was one of the great readers of Freud,
and listed all texts in which he was present. And there were also
his relationships with Lacan, Leclaire, Abraham, and Torok,
not forgetting René Major... Our conversations became
increasingly free and easy. For instance, he told me in detail
about Lacan’s indiscretion regarding Derrida’s son Pierre.^32Derrida asked to reread all the passages concerning him, but
made only minor modifi cations. For her part, Roudinesco’s account
brings out just how unique Derrida’s position was:
The further I advance, the more I realize the importance you
have had for the French history of psychoanalysis in the second
half of the century. I think that, in the relationship you have
to the ‘Freud question’, your place (and not your theories) is
comparable to that of Breton before the war: a contradictory
and perpetual questioning. And fi nally you are the only person
to have questioned the work of Lacan in a way other than by
mimicry, repetition, adoration, or mere rejection.^33Derrida’s loyalty to Louis Althusser, another target of French
Philosophy of the Sixties, was unfailing. In July 1983, Althusser
quietly left the Soisy clinic to move back to his apartment in the
rue Lucien-Leuwen, in the 10th arrondissement. However, the situ-
ation was still very delicate: ‘When the sectioning order was lifted,’
explains Étienne Balibar, ‘there was a kind of scandal, made worse
by Le Figaro.
As his address had been published, we were very worried. In
the entrance hall to the block of fl ats, they’d given him a false
name: Berger. Psychologically, Althusser was still extremely
fragile and he kept having to spend further periods in the clinic.
I remember one of his manic phases, when Derrida intervened- I.e. the French original. – Tr.