3

The object of this text is to underline how much Montaigne’s work of writing about himself, developing the mourning of his friend and then of his father, is close in many respects to that of the analysand and the psychoanalyst. A typical page of the Essais indeed appears, in many aspects, as the speech of the analysand subjected to “free association”: meanders, differences, surprising associations, membership, then change of direction. An opinion, a thought, a dream, are observed in the prisms of other opinions, thoughts or dreams: the thoughts of former authors, the thoughts of Montaigne himself, resonate in a ceaseless dialogue to the point that we can only evoke, in this way of writing and thinking, in what André Green calls “associative radiation” and “retroactive reverberation” found in the mental work specific to treatment.