Description
Book SynopsisIf your mentally ill patient dies, are you to blame? For Dr. Françoise Davoine, a Parisian psychoanalyst, this question becomes disturbingly real as one of her patients commits suicide on the eve of All Saints'' Day. She herself has a crisis, as she reflects on her thirty-year career and questions whether she should ever return to the hospital. But return she does, and thus commences a strange voyage across several centuries and countries, in which patients, fools, and the actors of medieval farces rise up from the past along with great thinkers who represent the author''s own philosophical and literary sources: the humanist Erasmus, mathematician René Thom, writer Antonin Artaud, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and physicist Edwin Schrödinger, to name a few. Imaginary dialogues ensue as the analyst conjures up an interconnected world, where apiculture, wondrous rituals, theater, and language games illuminate her therapeutic practice as well as her personal history. Deeply affected
Trade Review
"Luminous, erudite, diabolically ironic, and wonderfully wild, Francoise Davoine's Mother Folly turns psychiatry on its head. Taking her lead from that great satirical work by Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, Davoine has created a hybrid text, which combines elements of the novel, theatrical production, philosophical meditation, and narrative history to expose the absurdities of contemporary platitudes about mental illness and its treatment and to reveal the hidden truths of trauma and madness."—Siri Hustvedt
"Françoise Davoine's unique, vibrant tale of folly's journey takes us on many paths, and in doing so, shows us folly's place in history and its startling and painful resonances in the consulting room. Simply brilliant."—Valerie Walkerdine, Cardiff University
