Jacques Hassoun

A French psychoanalyst of Egyptian-Jewish origin (1936–1999), Jacques Hassoun was born in Alexandria and settled in France in 1954. A co-founder of the Cercle freudien, he developed a theory of melancholy and generational transmission. His books have become reference works, among them Les Contrebandiers de la mémoire (The Smugglers of Memory; Syros, 1994), La Cruauté mélancolique (Melancholy Cruelty; Aubier, 1995), and Histoire des Juifs du Nil (A History of the Jews of the Nile; Minerve, 1990).