The French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier was born on May 20, 1924, in Pontde-Roide, and died on August 18, 1996, in Besançon.

The youngest of three brothers, Racamier had solid roots in his native Franche-Comté by way of his father, who came from a Catholic family in the Drôme and worked as an engineer at the Peugeot factory, and his mother, who came from a Protestant family in the Montbéliard region. Racamier's mother considered her son's health to be delicate and home-schooled him until the age of nine; this experience imparted a life-long stance marked by a passion for very individualistic ideas and a refusal of all conformism. After receiving a good secondary education in Montbéliard, he studied medicine in Besançon and then in Paris; he passed the medical exam qualifying him to practice in the psychiatric hospitals in 1952.

Racamier spent the first part of his career at the psychiatric...