Name Maryse Choisy Role Philosopher | Died 1979, Paris, France | |
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Books Psychoanalysis of the Prostitute, Sigmund Freud: A New Appraisal | ||
Maryse Choisy (1903–1979) was a French philosophical writer.
Contents
Choisy followed an atypical path in life. Fascinated by psychoanalysis, she had the idea of introducing its concepts into her novels to better develop their characters; she then undertook to see what else could be brought to literature from other disciplines. She founded a movement which she named Suridealism to indicate the conceptual foundation on which it rested.
Life
She did not hesitate to go straight to the source to find out what she wanted to know, going so far as to spend one month in a house of prostitution before writing Un mois chez les filles (A Month With the Girls) and, later, to disguise herself as a young monk for a month for Un mois chez les hommes (A Month With the Men.) She wrote, incidentally, that she had to elude the advances of a monk from Mount Athos.
After an encounter and exchange of ideas with Teilhard de Chardin, Choisy converted to Roman Catholicism. She then tried to withdraw her work from publication and buy up any copies in circulation. Her reasoning was that her writing did not satisfy the criterion of three restraints, associated with Socrates: truth, usefulness, and kindness. She instead devoted herself to psychoanalysis, which she considered to be capable of a lasting contribution to the happiness of mankind. This was when she founded the "Psyché" movement, in which a young man named Jacques Lacan would begin his career. After her conversion, she still felt the urge to write. She produced the history of her conversion, On the way to God You Meet the Devil First, and the very moving Tales For My Little Girl (and For the Others). In the latter, the topic of death takes on a particular importance, even though a discreet humor remains present. In a final nod to her suridealistic youth, the hero of one of the stories is a nitrogen atom. He wonders about his own existence, experiences unhappy relationships, and ends up in a bombing.
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