Usages psychiques de la culture. Quelques illustrations littéraires d'un paradoxe

Abstract

As cultural experience, relating to the achievements of the « common lot of humanity », is one of the identity traits essential to the individual (D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, French translation, 1975), we believed it was legitimate to explore its benefits, which may motivate self to accept in its intimacy a "cultural stranger" even if the latter emanates in parallel a good dose of forbidden. Thanks to Freud, we already know that if we develop hostile motions to the standards of the community it is because of the drive sacrifices they require, but the gain withdrawn – a life in common bearable through the regulation of human relations – can be a sufficient reason for the self to become a carrier of culture. More recently, a series of functions of cultural offerings for intrapsychic life have also been highlighted (e.g. P. Paduart, « Psychisme et culture »), which are commented in connection with certain more or less fictional universes built by H. Hesse, M. Proust and J.-P. Sartre.