Robert Snell in conversation

Robert Snell is a psychotherapist and art historian. His review of the book "L'Anti Livre Noire" (edited by Jacques Alain Miller, and published by Seuil, 2006) mixes his wonderful wit and erudition, and led me to Brighton to meet him during the town's vibrant Festival earlier this year. Here we wonder whether a certain section of the British might have lost their ability to deploy and enjoy some vitriol.

RS: "... the Miller book was a relief for me to read because the writers don’t seem to be worrying about offending anyone. They
are speaking clearly and making an open attack on a declared enemy. So, it is also a rant. Maybe in England at the moment it is not possible to do that. In France it seems ok to have a fight. It is very difficult to remain calm when someone states boldly that ‘CBT is the treatment of choice’. It’s such a meaningless phrase, and begs all kinds of questions - it comes at you like a slab of concrete. ... What was so good about the Anti-Livre noir was the humour and the irony, and the pleasure that came through. They are engaged in a battle, but not without humour.

JL: Yes, humour is going to be useful. At the moment many of us seem a bit paralysed, unable to think when faced with this demand for evidence and the need to know everything in advance.

RS: Humour, yes, and poetry probably... Keats’s ‘negative capability’ which Bion was so fond of invoking is still as a good a place to start as any: “negative capability, that is when a man is capable of being in doubt and uncertainty without idle reaching after fact and reason...”



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