´«Soon you will be alone and I will be a shadow that nobody will remember» , said Franco to François Peraldi. François Peraldi tries by this article : Franco et sa mort, to tell his anticipation of his death to us. When you read François’ articles after the fact, in the après-coup, you realize how much he tried to tell us about his coming death, to write for the future.

I would say, on the other hand, he had a romantic representation of his death wich is exposed in this article, amongst others, and I shared this image with him, I would say I bought this myth from him, he convinced me, because he wanted us to see it this way.

But when I saw him for an interview for Filigrane, it was a very different story... It was a month before his death, and he appeared very ill, I had difficulty to recognize him and to connect with him, which was not the case on the phone, before and after the interview. He was angry and bitter. I can understand very well why! He wanted to save the myth, but was bitter about leaving life so soon…

Before that, we had met in Chez Gautier on a beautiful day of septembre 1992 and he still had his big nice laugh. He also told me that he was loosing weight, but he felt very lignt about it. As if his life was leaving him with theese kilos he tried so hard to loose when he was not ill. This feeling of being removed, relieved of his body, kilo by kilo, made him laugh, and when I told him: it must be agonizing, angoissant unbearable, he said – «not at all»  and added after : - «It’s incredable, terrible, what I just said»…He was still laughing, and we had a very deep and pleasant conversation, and a good lunch in the sun…

I would like to make here an analogy with Les Invasions Barbares, where the same myth about death is showed in a very moving movie on a group of close friends of intellectuel baby-boomers and some of their children of Quebec. In Les Invasions Barbares, a big event in Québec this month and in Cannes this week, the university history teacher dies in a nice chalet with around him his friends and family, he tells them goodbye after a last meal with fresh truffes he can’t eat and wine he can’t drink and a beautiful nurse gives him a shot, before an old mistress and friend’s daughter adds héroïne to the mixt. A «nice» death, a happy end that contrasts with the beginning of the movie where everybody screams and fignts in a crowded hospital. This movie made everybody laugh and cry, including the actors, the producer, the public here and in Cannes, except for the actor playing the role of the son who had made all this decor come true. The son, in a reconciliation scenario after his mother told him how he kept him alive in his arms, made his father leaving the crowded hospital where frustrated old mistresses were irrupting at all times, the promiscuity with other patients and families unbearable etc. He made the chalet and the buisy friends available, gathering around the table for a re-union, for this last meal, like in Jacques Brel’s song, with friends, loving ones, sex stories, noise, food and wormth. Take the song and theese images and the ´«saving» son as a metaphore…

I wanted to emphasize on this myth that seems so effective that everybody cries when meeting this representation of this hedonic and reuniting last meal. There seems to be something very strong about this myth that makes it an event.

A totemic meal ? In Franco et sa mort, it is Franco’s picture wich is discovered a few monts after his death.

In my interview with François story, on the contrary, the last meal is first and the bitterness is at the end. No more laughs… The picture is the sound of the voice on the tape and theese words he left us with.

I was stupidely surprised and stunned after I saw him and it took me a few days to realize what was missing: the smile.

François died in a chosen isolation and his shadow is still around us. He decided to pull out from relationships gradualy like in the concentric circles of Dante’s hell.

So, we had very little occasions to comment and elaborate about it all together, except with readings, circulation of his texts and writings.

So I would like to thank here the organisators of the Friday colloque, as well as John Muller who organised twice in the Lacanian clinical forum gatherings for sharing, talking, discussing and wrinting about François Peraldi’s transmission to us.

His writings, his oral transmission with his seminar and via psycho-analytical canals : analysis and supervision are very precious to us. And I am very pleased when I see that many students are reading Peraldi and very interested in his work, when I realize that his transmission went through…

For years, François Peraldi had a seminar, then two allternating seminars about Lacan. It was the only formal teaching of Lacan in Montreal, even though Lacan was known and introduced, in university mostly, before : Lise Monette in the department of philosophy of UQAM and Claude Levesques in the departement of philosophie of the university of Montreal amongs others, had made cotations of Lacan, some others too, like Paul Bleton, but the first systematic work on the texts and the seminars were done by François. At the beginning, then again, for the last years, analysts from the SPM (Société psychanalytique de Montréal) joigned the seminar and presented in it. But on the long run, many students, young and older psychoanalysts and other intellectuals from other fields†: like anthropology, history, litterature etc. were attracted to François’ seminar on Lacan.

That meant that being a ´«seminarist» with François automatically meant being ´«lacanian», but I did not know what it meant to be lacanian before going to Paris in 1991 to the first gathering of Lacan’s readers and folowers, former members of the Ecole Freudienne, 10 years after his death. We were six analysts from Montreal and decided to go to this 1srt Congress of the Inter-Associatif.

Then I realized at that time that I was far from being a lacanian in this sens, that I had an identification problem. Does it connect with the identification with François’ identification? After all, we spent a very long time on Lacan’s seminar on identification…

Once we were invited for a supper at his house with other friends. Mireille Lafortune†told me about a dream she had, or an opera, I can’t remember (??) and mentionned a phantom, a ghost on a wardrobe. And I said to her : de you often frequent (go around with) phantoms ? She looked at me in such a way, saying: - «Yes!» that I felt very very bad and awkword… because amongst all people, Mireille had more of her share of ghosts… The evening passed and when, a few days later, I told my story to François, he had his laugh and said something about the unconscious who manifest like this. He told me another story
with Michèle Montrelay where he constantly was talking about what he was not supposed to talk about…

He believed in the unconscious and its permanent knocking on our doors.

During this year, I worked on ´«La pensée magique»ª, the unconscious and the transmission of thoughts. Amongst the articles I read, Freud’s and François Peraldi’s where they say that they believed in†transmission of thougnts, even if François talks about quantium physics… So I was wondering if Fançois was not woundering around me, like a ghost with all those questions about magic. Thats why I think I should come back to the question of transmission, in in two meanings, wich was mine when I decided to present for this meeting.

To tell you the truth, François was really woundering around. While writing theese words, a lady had a cesure outside, in front of my house and while I was talking to the emergency staff on the phone and with my neighbour who is a médical doctor, Donna missed her plane, was stuck in Chicago and calling me on the other lign. But when the ambulance came, the lady had already decided to leave after drinking a glass of juice and with the banana I gave her in her hand… A kind of surrealistic situation…

Institutionaly, François had a paradoxical message about his transmission and some of us were, in a way, caught in this paradox. On one hand, he gave us the message that Lacan was the reference and in an other hand, he was this anarchist saying†: ´«Ni Dieu, ni maître».  He was putting himself –ambivalently- in a master position, and telling us that institution was a terrible thing, that institution was bad. He hated this parisian way of always refering to a master and an other master and came to Quebec in a «new» world were he could begin something new. So he, in a way was like many other foundators en psychoanalysis, the first foundator, a kind of Lucky Luke, the lonesome cowboy, with a fantasy of ´«auto-engendrement», even though he insisted in saying that he was not the first one in la marge neither working as an analyst outside the SPM.

So what comes after François Peraldi ?

In my generation, psychoanalysts began to work outside the psychoanalytic society without too much difficulties.

In the generation of young clinicians and students in several fields a big interest is raised in François’ work. They read him with pleasure, connecting with this aspect of him of putting down the statues, the ´«iconoclastic» François, the one who was revolting and outraged about psychiatry, ego psychology, or psychology…They develop a transferance with this different analyst they never met.

What is to remember of François’ transmission is around his original views on psychosis, on femininity and maternity with Kali the Goddess and, of course, on sexuality. Sexuality is far for the œdipian model of supposed accomplishment and transferance not quite the hollywoodian love between a middle aged male psychoanalyst with a woung and beautiful female patient. The transferance could be rather close to the death drive with very unpleasant signifiers like the one he describes with the patient who made him think of a wistling and biting snake. It is important to think about his work on the signifier and with the differents registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the Real, lacanian concepts but without the dogmatic approach.

His developments about the institution are also important to us. According to him, psychoanalytical institutions are to be avoided. The only possibility would be a kind of structure with a lack inside it, in the place of the leader. This idea is seductive, but impossible to make true, again, it could fonction like a metaphore.

Finaly, some analysts in Montreal reunited and decided to found a psychoanalytical association. Many of us have worked with François Peraldi and valued very much his work that was essentiel to many of us. We founded in octobre 1999 the Libre Association de psychanalyse de Montreal and had our first colloque in octobre 2002. So, we transgressed the foundation part, now we are struggling with the transmission one : wich part did we take from François Peraldi, wich part we left out, wether we like it or not, wether we know it or not and we try to pass it through to younger analystes and clinicians.

Important also to remember the insolence of his way of thinking and presenting.

I was very interested to try to trace what he left us with. I realized that this iconoclastic part of him, the one you couldn’t put in any category was a part that I recognize myself in. But also, I wish to continue this teaching part of him always open to listen, to hear the part of insolence and unconscious and maybe, the magic part…