INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS:

Europe: Is the dream falling apart? (Iain Macwhirter, 5/29/05, Sunday Herald)

There is understandable gloom and foreboding this weekend over the future of the European project. If France and the Netherlands vote “No” to the new constitution, it will likely start a rejectionist domino effect that will knock on through Denmark, Ireland and Poland. Europe could be flattened for a generation.

Then again, perhaps this could be the moment when Europe finally comes to its senses. The French “non” will be a crisis, certainly, but a crisis is also a turning point. Few will mourn the loss of this less than inspiring document. It could be an opportunity for Europe to regain some of its idealism and purpose; a chance to remind itself that the EU is about more than agricultural support quotas.

'Split' France on analyst's couch: With opinion polls pointing to a likely victory for the "No" camp in Sunday's French referendum on the EU constitution, Paris psychoanalyst Eric Laurent talks to the BBC's William Horsley and puts his nation "on the couch". (BBC, 5/28/05)

BBC: What has the referendum campaign told you about the state of mental health of the French?

EL: It seems that in the referendum there's something irrational going on.

BBC: In what sense are the French being more irrational than usual?

EL: The fact that the "No" had this surge is, as one of our political leaders said, bizarre. The "No" vote comes from absolutely all walks of life.

BBC: Is France showing symptoms of a split personality?

EL: Yes, something like that. Of course in modern democracies the political personality is always split. You have two parties with different opinions. But this split means for the first time in years that something doesn't fit in with the usual divisions.

BBC: Are the French suffering from extreme stress? Is that what is making them behave out of character?

EL: There is a special stress, and the French nation was always revolutionary in its character. The Enlightenment happened all over Europe, but only the French nation was so divided that it produced the French revolution.

And the two parts of the nation never quite mended after that. So France has a special kind of instability among modern democracies. [...]

BBC: Are you sure that this is out of character? Perhaps this is a trait of character that hadn't come out before, but actually this is the true nature of the patient?

When Freud came up with the idea of the anal personality he was close to describing the French, but their syndrome requires the noun, not the adjective.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 29, 2005 12:00 AM