Într-un articol de acum câteva luni, Times face un scurt inventar al aplicaţiilor psihanalitice prilejuite de personalitatea preşedintelui francez Nicolas Sarkozy. Deşi popularitatea sa a scăzut de la alegeri încoace, preşedintele e în continuare la fel de prezent în mass-media, la fel de discutat, provocând o adevărată „sarkomanie”.
Since France loves psychoanalysis, the shrinks have had a field day. In books, seminars and television appearances they have described Sarko as neurotic, bipolar, Oedipal, even psychopathic. One psychiatrist, Hervé Hubert, has been running a popular seminar at Paris VII University with the title “Sarkozy the symptom: a reading of the unconscious”. His diagnosis is widely shared down at the pub. The vertically challenged President seeks the love of the public because his father abandoned him as a child; the swift replacement of Cécilia by Carla is a symptom of self-indulgence and insecurity, and so on. Some of Sarko’s old colleagues have joined the fray. François Léotard, a former Defence Minister, has published a book in which he detects in the President narcissism, aggression and childish behaviour that stem from insecurity. In another approach Jacques Alain Miller, a psychiatrist, told the President this week that his only hope for reforming himself was to undergo analysis. Sarko’s problem is his inability to distinguish his ego from his id, Miller concluded.
But there is another way of looking at “Psycho Sarko”. The neurosis may not be on the President’s side, but with the French and their mania with him. For months Super-Sarko has dominated conversation. The psychiatrists say their patients bring him up as soon as they hit the couch, so they have coined a new term – “acute Sarkozis”. This means being obsessed by the phenomenon of the President – le personnage mythologique – rather than the real man. From there it is only a small step to seeing that France may not know its President as well as it thinks.
