Who is Maryse Touboul?

Dr. Maryse Touboul, founder of The School of Aliveness & Adulthood, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Paris since 1980. Inspired by Lacan's theory of the Signifier, and by Einstein's Relativity theory, Dr. Touboul developed her own psychoanalytical technique, which results from many years of research on: How to move away from the Unconscious' way of functioning--reactive to the other and putting us in a position of object--and move toward an active way of functioning based on consciousness, through which we can become Subject of our life?

During her own psychoanalysis with a Lacanian, Dr. Touboul developed what she would later name the Unconscious' Laws of Transmission of the Sexual Pre-Determiners. She completed this discovery a few years later with the transition from a transmitted Sexual Pre-Determination (Father/Mother - Son/Daughter), to a Gendered Determination (man - woman), which needs to be made. Click here to access the text and diagrams about the transmission over three generations (pdf, 83kb).

Maryse Touboul's dream is that her work and technique will allow as many people as possible to love their life and to go through each day without ever giving up on time as their source of hope, without losing their desire and dedication to loving each day; and to believe in this more than in anything else. Loneliness only comes when the hopelessness and the boredom that it causes take over the mind and the body. To love our life and to turn it into something that does not disappoint us, requires that we focus all our courage and energy on looking forward to every day with all our heart, instead of yearning for eternity with all our pride.

Dr. Touboul regularly participates in seminars in the USA, Europe and Latin America, through her affiliation to the following institutions:

International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), USA

George Washington University (GWU), USA

Washington School of Psychiatry, USA

States General of Psychoanalysis, France

Click here to read the publications and papers written by Dr. Touboul.
Dr. Touboul also regularly gives lectures. Click here to access the list and calendar.

Evolution of Ideas & Creations

Early on, as a student of Medicine and Psychiatry, Maryse Touboul became interested in the thresholds and stages of life, and in the meaning of aliveness:

What is the meaning of life?

How to love it?

How to be proud of oneself and not give in to deadly and despairing drives, which kill the feeling of aliveness?

As she listened to those who said "I want to die," she responded instinctively "non-sense": "I" cannot desire to die because desire goes with life, not death. Despair kills aliveness because it is caused by disappointment and lack of the other.

Based on these considerations, Dr. Touboul created the concept of Threshold Medicine (1976), which answers the following questions:

Where is the Threshold of Aliveness?

What is possible and how to get to it?

How to pass from Affective Immaturity, which causes each person to feel like a lost child, to Affective Maturity, which dares to free itself from the Parental Language and from the power of the Sexual, to move toward a Gendered Identity of Real Man and Woman?

Then starts the work of passing from the Unconscious and its deadly way of functioning--fundamentally linked to the other--to the Conscious and a structured Instinct for Life--connected to the desire to feel alive. This implies changing work axis, and focusing on the effects of the Unconscious on people's daily way of functioning, more than on the Unconscious itself. The concept of "truth" in the Unconscious is relative: Stories from the past are necessarily reconstructions and interpretations, even though the way of functioning they generate is real; and this "truth" is what keeps repeating itself and driving our life, without us being able to disarm it or free ourselves from it.

Working on how people think, how they interpret things and how they behave with others, with the world and with life, allows us to find the way to change the Language, to move toward the meaning of life, using real space-time as the new coordinate. To trust time is very important: When we give our self to time, time gives it back to us; whereas when we give our self to the other, the other takes and never has to give anything back. To trust time, thus our self, means to dare to anticipate without knowing what will happen. To fear failure is already surrendering to it without being aware of it. Believing in our self then means trusting time and making it a strong ally for the rest of our life. Freeing our self from the past can only be achieved by building a successful present.

From a non-knowledge that causes fear to a non-knowledge that brings hope: This is how psychoanalysis becomes human, meaning relative and real, and better succeeds in alienating absolute knowledge and its symbolism, killer of life. If expressing ourselves is considered an action, this action becomes the creation of it toward what signifies its structure and makes it come alive through the motivation of a changing desire, which faces risk and confronts the inhumanity of a closed and immobile Unconscious.

It then comes naturally to truly be our self, instead of suffering from the imprint of our memory. To love our life is possible; it means giving it a real meaning. To love our parents is also possible, but it can only be achieved by accepting to recognize who we are in this life and who gave it to us. This is not innate; it needs to be learned. To this effect, Dr. Maryse Touboul created the School of Aliveness & Adulthood (1994). The School develops respect for the Values of Life, which give the feeling of aliveness, and make the Consciousness of Time become an essential object to acquire. This entails:

Acting in a way that will make us feel good.

Taking the time and making the daily effort to refuse to let our self be driven by our drives.

Having the real energy and will to recognize and refuse states of dependence and unwell-being.

Questioning our desire, experimenting, and taking the risk of doing things differently, until we feel good with what we do, how we do it, what we say and how we think.

This means making the Unconscious and its transmitted Language of Lack be at the service of the Conscious and its Language: The Language of our desire to feel Alive. This requires learning to develop the concepts of Life and of Real Space-Time, which give us the feeling that we are structuring a subject--"I"--which does not disappoint its object--our Self. Yesterday's only value is that it is a time during which we can learn to better love today and what we will do with it tomorrow.

The same year, Dr. Maryse Touboul created the Life Quotient (LQ), a tool that tests people's Level of Aliveness by evaluating how they feel about their daily Real Space-Time. The test is composed of 25 questions about the Language of Non-Aliveness (i.e. language of lack, dependence, passivity, etc.) and of 25 questions about the Language of Life (i.e. language of autonomy, desire, action and consciousness). From these questions are deduced the Level of Aliveness and the Life Quotient.

Dr. Maryse Touboul, wishing for psychoanalysis to come out of its silence, also created the Association for the Promotion of the Individual's Laws of Life (APILL) in 1997, and its equivalent APELVI in France, in order to reach more individuals, and to allow them to take time for themselves to respond to vital questions. The association was dissolved at the end of 2005, but Dr. Touboul continues to give lectures. Her intention is to teach about Concepts of Life (hope, time, work, energy, etc.) and their meaningful language, and to contrast them to the concepts of non-aliveness (wait, dependence, lack, etc.) and their meaningless language. Click here to access the list of conferences and the calendar.