L'Art et l'inceste: Sarabande d'Ingmar Bergman

Bergman's final film, Sarabande, allows us to define the question of father-daughter incest, a problem that is present in his work throughout his long career and which has never found a satisfactory resolution. The comparison of this last screenplay by one of the major authors of the twentieth century, with the additional information that the translation into images contributes, permits us to uncover several elements of the familial structure, especially that of the pervert father, which are difficult to clarify in a clinical setting. This study confronts Bergman's texts, both autobiographical and literary, with psychoanalytic theory and case studies. This paper hopes to propose a contribution to our understanding of incest in the general framework of perversion. Bergman suggests that the failure of the parent-child relationship can have disastrous consequences for the child, on the model of autism, as well as provoking anxiety in the adult. The deficit in the elaboration of a self image will be seen to be a determining factor in the relationship to the Law for the perverse structure.