Jacques Henric on Louis Althusser's Letters to Hélène

Jacques Henric reviews the publication of Louis Althusser's "Lettres à Hélène 1947-1980," edited by Olivier Corpet with a preface by Bernard-Henri Lévy. Henric reflects on the ghostly figures of French communist intellectuals—Duclos, Laurent Casanova, Kanapa, Wurmser, Garaudy, Waldeck-Rochet, Marchais—that Althusser corresponded with, contrasting his own youthful political disillusionment. He notes the paradox that Althusser's writings inspired many young communists to leave the party while Althusser remained loyal. The letters, addressed to Hélène Legotien (née Rytman), reveal little about political debates but focus on travel, daily life, and Althusser's psychoanalytic treatments. Henric highlights disturbing signs: Althusser's virginity until age 30, his mythomania, manic-depression treated with electroshock, dependence on psychiatrists like René Diatkine, and his admission of a "catastrophic presence" and a "force stronger than him" that led to Hélène's strangulation on November 16, 1980. Henric questions how a philosopher of reason could be mad, and whether Althusser's Marxism remains relevant after the Gulag, Cambodia, and China's Cultural Revolution. He notes Althusser's return to Catholicism under the influence of the elderly Pétainist Guitton.