Psychopathologies of the Living

Selected Essays of Pierre Fédida

Patrick ffrench, Nigel Saint

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English

Routledge
17 September 2025

Phenomenology & Existentialism; Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology); Psychotherapy

Series: The International Psychoanalytical Association Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series

Psychopathologies of the Living makes the work of the French psychoanalyst Pierre Fédida (1934–2002) available in English for the first time.

Patrick ffrench and Nigel Saint present key essays selected from Fédida’s extensive oeuvre. The book directs attention to two salient dimensions of Fédida’s writing: his attention to the pathologies of the body, considered as both a psychic and somatic entity, and his insistence on the relevance of psychoanalytic thought to the sciences of life. The chapters included in this collection detail Fédida’s creative use of aesthetic sources in his psychoanalytic work, his distinctive and creative manipulation and revision of central psychoanalytic concepts and his precise attention to the texts of Freud, Ferenczi and Winnicott, among others. This selection of Fédida’s essays also shows his avoidance of thematisation or explicit theorisation; for Fédida the theory of psychoanalysis must arise out of the specific interplay of language and the ‘space of the session’.

Psychopathologies of the Living will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training and to academics and scholars of philosophy, aesthetics and literary studies.

Edited by: Patrick ffrench, Nigel Saint
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032637594
ISBN 10: 1032637595
Series: The International Psychoanalytical Association Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series
Pages: 206
Publication Date: 17 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Editors and Translators: Patrick ffrench is Professor of French at King’s College London where he teaches 20th-century French literature, philosophy and cinema, critical theory and psychoanalysis. Nigel Saint is Associate Professor of French at the University of Leeds where he teaches literature, culture and critical theory, and works on contemporary artists and art theory. Translators: Timothy Mathews is a critic and creative writer. His most recent translations are Guillaume Apollinaire, Seated Woman (2022), and selected pages from Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux (2023). timothymathews.com. Anne-Marie Smith-Di Biasio teaches Modernist Studies and Literary translation at the Catholic University of Paris and is Associate Professor in Liberal Arts at Paris College of Art. Her most recent monograph is Le Palimpseste mémoriel. Entendre la mémoire au fil des modernismes (SUP 2024).

Reviews for Psychopathologies of the Living: Selected Essays of Pierre Fédida

“Among French theorists of psychoanalysis Pierre Fédida (1934–2002) is less well-known to Anglophone readers than Lacan, Anzieu, Kristeva, Laplanche or Green, but this book aims to set that right. Eight new translations are presented, as is an extensive introduction to his work. He was a close and scrupulous reader of Freud’s work, relating it to the existential psychology of Binswanger.” - Naomi Segal, Professor Emerita, Institute of Languages, Cultures & Societies, University of London “I had the good fortune to know Pierre Fédida personally, and I know and admire his work. I warmly support Patrick Ffrench and Nigel Saint's publication of a selection of his work in translation. This will make an essential contribution to a better understanding of modern psychoanalysis in its capacity to renew, deepen and enrich Freudian thought.” - Julia Kristeva, University of Paris