Of course, Sigmund Freud didn't teach at the Collège de France, but he did come there in 1885, to visit Louis Ranvier, Professor of General Anatomy (1875-1911), and he was an avid reader of other Collège de France professors, such as Alfred Maury, Théodule Ribot and Henri Bergson. In addition to Pierre Janet, many other professors debated Freudian ideas: Henri Bergson, Henri Piéron, Henri Wallon, Paul Valéry, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss and, more recently, the holders of the contemporary neuroscience chairs and their advocates before the Assembly of Professors. Freudian ideas, which had a profound impact on intellectual life throughout the 20th century, were thus able to influence the destiny of certain disciplines at the Collège de France.
The symposium is organized as part of the "Passage des disciplines" project, which looks at the evolution of subjects taught from the end of the 18th century to the 1960s, directed by Antoine Compagnon, with the collaboration of Céline Surprenant. "Freud at the Collège de France" aims to situate the reception of Freudian ideas in relation to the development of some of the chairs, or lineages of chairs. Looking at the rejection or near-rejection of Freudian ideas, common to a number of chairs, is not intended to renew the critique or defense of psychoanalysis - that's not the point - but to clarify our knowledge of what presided over the institution of certain types of knowledge rather than others at the Collège de France.
After the first day, which will deal with issues relating to the chairs of experimental psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and literature, the symposium will continue on the second day with history and social psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy.