Anne Dufourmantelle
Philosopher, psychoanalyst and writer who believed fear should be embraced
ANNE Dufourmantelle, who has died from drowning aged 53 while attempting to rescue two children from the sea, was a French philosopher and psychoanalyst; the manner of her death was made all the more poignant by the fact that she was best known for her studies of risk and in her essay
Eloge du Risque (“In Praise of Risk”, 2011) she advocated that danger “must be faced in order
to survive”.
Eloge du Risque focused on the nature of fear, the limitations of being risk averse and the freedom of risk taking. In 2015, after France imposed heightened security measures following terrorist attacks, Anne Dufourmantelle explained in the French newspaper Liberation that “the idea of absolute security — like ‘zero risk’ — is a fantasy”.
Fear, she said, should be embraced: “When one admits his fear, his finitude, a confidence can be reborn from this vulnerability...being alive is a risk.”
She believed, moreover, that risk was an important factor in human achievement. “When there really is a danger that must be faced in order to survive, for example during the Blitz in London,” she explained, “there is a strong incentive for action, dedication, and surpassing oneself ”.
A public intellectual and philosopher in the French tradition, Anne Dufourmantelle was also a popular and much published essayist and author; she engaged with a wide range of subjects, often harking back to the ancient philosophers while also reflecting on how the modern world could learn from them.
In Of Hospitality (2000), which she wrote with Jacques Derrida, her commentary on what it is to be a foreigner appeared on the left-hand pages opposite transcripts of Derrida’s lectures on the topic. “When we enter an unknown place,” she wrote, “the emotion experienced is almost always that of an indefinable anxiety. There then begins the slow work of taming the unknown, and gradually the unease fades away”.
In Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy (2007), she examined why sex and philosophy have, since ancient times, traditionally refused to engage with each other, despite what she saw as their similarities — both can be obsessive, socially subversive, self-involved and offer the illusion of an escape from time and mortality. Her published essay Puissance de la douceur (The Power of Sweetness, 2013) reflected on the strength, potential and necessity of “douceur” (also translated as gentleness, mildness or softness) in the modern world.
In Defense du secret (“Defense of Secrecy”, 2015) she suggested that as a society we have forgotten the value of privacy and secrecy in a world where transparency and the ability to find out about others through the internet and social media has become the norm.
A “secret garden”, she said in an interview in 2015, “is something no one can take from you”.
Anne Dufourmantelle was born in Paris on March 20, 1964 and educated at Brown University, Rhode Island. She earned her doctorate in Philosophy at the Sorbonne.
She practised as a psychoanalyst in the Jungian tradition in France, Spain and Latin America and was a lecturer at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, the Sorbonne and New York University.
In 2015 she published a novel, L’envers du feu, a thriller about a psychiatrist.
Shortly before her death, Anne Dufourmantelle had been researching and teaching the value of silence in the psychoanalytic process.
She died at Pampelonne beach, near Saint Tropez. The two children she was attempting to rescue were saved by a lifeguard.
She is survived by her long-term partner, the writer and translator Frederic Boyer, and their three daughters.
Anne Dufourmantelle died on July 21.