Antoedipus by Racamier. Incestuality from within, or Narcissus's Sabotage against Oedipus

Psychoanalytic research

Abstract

Relationship with mother is the most important relationship in every person's life, laying the foundation for their entire mental functioning. Unfortunately, these relationships do not always work out well. One of the pathological scenarios is a symbiotic fusion relationship, colored by tones of incestuousness.

Many works by prominent psychoanalysts have been written and translated about the perniciousness of the protracted fusion relationship between mother and child. The author of this paper has focused her attention on only one concept on this topic, a concept not often mentioned in Russian psychoanalytic literature, but undoubtedly worthy of recognition and careful study. This is Paul- Claude Racamier's concept of incestuality and narcissistic seduction and the related phenomenon of Antoedipus – as Racamiercalled the primitive, archaic, characterized by ignoring differences and boundaries, anti-conflict and paradoxical level of relationship with the object, primarily the mother-child relationship.

The work provides a development of Racamier's ideas and a comparative analysis of Antoedipus and Oedipus by the psychoanalyst from his latest book L’inceste et l’incestuel. In addition, a translation of the “myth of Antoedipus” (analogous to the myth of Oedipus), written by Racamier as a “prelude and entertainment” is presented for the first time. “Myth” figuratively describes all the main components of this phenomenon – denial of origin and the phantasm-non-phantasm of self-generation, anti-conflict, paradox, silencing of truth, fusion with the primary object, exile of the third. The translation with illustrations is based on the 1980 edition by Petite Bibliothèque Payot.