The Millers, fallen gurus of psychoanalysis – L’Express

What would North Korean public opinion say if a member of the nomenklatura were suspected of massive sexual abuse? Probably not much. “We’re going to North Korea,” some of the psychoanalysts invited to the Ecole de la cause freudienne conferences have been joking for years. “It’s a tight-knit association where everyone knows each other, spends their Saturdays together, often their holidays. When I left, I lost my patients and friends,” recalls psychoanalyst Geneviève Morel, a member until 2000, who describes a “gaseous structure, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise.”

“The Cause”, as they say in the microcosm? “A success, an enormous amount of work done, especially internationally, but also a group that is quite withdrawn into itself”, assesses the academic and psychoanalyst Roland Gori. A “doctrinal indoctrination” of which “the three Millers, Judith, Jacques-Alain and Gérard, are the undisputed leaders”, slams Elisabeth Roudinesco in her History of psychoanalysis in France (Points). A “sect”, rants Colette Soler, director from 1981 to 1983 before leaving in a fracas in 1998.

Within the influential psychoanalysis association created by Jacques-Alain Miller in 1981, no one felt more inspired than the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang when his brother Gérard was accused of rape, sexual assault under hypnosis and control by some sixty women last February. No press release on the website of the school, of which the media figure was a pillar for forty years, no position taken by its members. Mum’s the word. The association, although quick to comment on social events or to organize public meetings against the National Rally, as in 2017 and 2022, is this time mute.

Resignation, not suspension

There is only this slightly embarrassed message on LinkedIn, dated February 13: “Gérard Miller informed the president of the School that, while formally refuting the accusations made against him in the media, he had decided to resign from the School”. Gérard Miller is not suspended, it is he who “announces” his voluntary withdrawal, despite his “formal recusal”. Nuance. Since then, the therapist has continued some of his consultations, according to our information, but his name no longer appears in the directory of the “School of the Cause”.

Anaëlle Lebovits-Quenehen, the president of the association, apparently did not take note of Zahoua’s testimony in the magazine. She. This former psychoanalysis student claims to have been taken to the Ecole de la cause freudienne by Gérard Miller in 1994, where she was sexually assaulted under hypnosis, in an empty room. “No ‘alleged act’ took place on the premises of our school,” the director told us when we contacted her about this.

Director Muriel Cousin describes touching, again under hypnosis, at the Institut du champ freudien, one of the many structures housed by “la Cause”, as indicated on its website. “Gérard Miller wanted to hypnotize everyone, he constantly suggested it, as an exercise”, remembers Geneviève Morel, who never heard of any attacks.

“They were stars”

Gérard Miller, presumed innocent, is now saving his words for the courts. A preliminary investigation for rape and sexual assault has been opened with the Paris prosecutor’s office, after three complaints. Jacques-Alain Miller also did not wish to respond to our request; he has never spoken on the subject, which ruined his 80th birthday on February 14. “The affair is experienced as a disaster, but there is a defensive reflex,” says an old acquaintance of the two brothers. At the Ecole de la cause freudienne and beyond, a profound silence dominates. “We were stunned by the silence of our community. Conversely, we believe that remaining silent about something so thunderous is to be caught off guard by our ethics, which require that we name things,” counters Stéphanie Péchikoff, the only psychoanalyst to have reacted publicly, with two of her colleagues, in a column in The World.

A silence that was probably also heartbreaking for the Millers, as both of them built their careers on their mastery of words. A sudden sound cut after so many battles won, often in tandem, which established them as feared and revered figures. “They were stars! But we saw them little, their department operated a bit separately, like a feudalism,” recalls Pierre Lunel, president of the University of Paris VIII, between 2001 and 2006, in this decade when the two Millers succeeded each other as director of the department of psychoanalysis.

Squeaky chalk

It would be hard to be more different a priori than these brothers, the younger one, born in 1948, slender when the older one by four years wants to be massive, and these voices so dissimilar, piercing tone for Gérard, like a chalk that creaks, unctuous trickle, coming from the belly, for Jacques-Alain. They both frequented Maoist circles, within the organization the Gauche prolétarienne, but when “Vincent”, the pseudo militant of the younger one, storms the headquarters of the employers, in June 1969, his big brother’s activism is essentially literary. One charges without ever doubting – “My mistakes do not bother me and I have no remorse, nor repentance, nor regret”, explains Gérard Miller to Jewish Newsin 2005 – when the other often drags a vague melancholy. “I have seen Jacques-Alain suffer from human relationships”, says the philosopher Catherine Clément, his friend of sixty years, since she saw him make a remark to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, during his seminar at the ENS, in January 1964.

The episode marks the turning point in the life of “Jam”, his nickname. That day, the graduate of the École Normale Supérieure caught the attention of the master, as well as his student daughter. Two years later, he married Judith Lacan. “Can you imagine, I’m going to marry the princess!” Jacques-Alain confided to Catherine Clément. The academic’s closest disciple, “Jam” became his successor after his death in 1981; Lacan had designated him as the only person authorized to publicly transcribe his seminars. His control over “La Cause”, where it was rumored that almost every therapist had been analyzed by him before being granted tenure, contributed to his aura; his course at Paris VIII on “the Lacanian orientation” fascinated a growing multitude of students. “Psychoanalysis in the 21st century involves three names: Freud, Lacan, Miller,” assures Hervé Castanet, university professor and member of “La Cause”, in an essay entirely devoted to the thought of “Jam”. In 2006, the Ecole de la cause freudienne will even obtain its “recognition of public utility”, taxpayers can deduct from their taxes 66% of their donations to the association.

“Candy Sucked Smile”

To Jacques-Alain, the written word, intellectual prestige. To Gérard, the spoken word, celebrity and the media world, of which he became a notable through his collaborations with Michel Drucker and then with the gang of Laurent Ruquier, godfather of his youngest daughter. No one then paid much attention to his passion for hypnosis, claimed several times, nor to his attraction to young women, except perhaps Guy Carlier. “Watch him on TV […] who poses in front of the high school girls in the audience, drawing on his austere face of a Stalinist prosecutor an unbearable smile of sucked candy. This guy has such a need to seduce,” the polemicist claws in Heart in the belly (Plon), in 2006.

Loyal to Jean-Luc Mélenchon for a decade, Gérard Miller has set himself up as a model for the fight against sexual violence on television. “There is a duty to listen to what is said and to ensure that it has consequences,” he fumes at It’s tonight, on France 5, in May 2022. Then he was again outraged, on the same set, by Gérard Depardieu’s behavior, in January 2024. Several women having testified to the magazine They will say that this attitude was a trigger for them. After sixty years of triumphing through words, the two brothers are now entrenched in a silence with no end date. Until when? The paradoxical situation would probably have inspired Freud and Lacan.