On the morning of Sunday 16 November, Hélène Althusser, wife of philosopher Louis Althusser, was found dead in their Ecole Normale flat in the rue d’Ulm. The philosopher, in a state of complete delirium, accused himself of strangling her. The college doctor, Etienne, and the deputy director had to overpower him with the help of a caretaker and have him interned in Sainte-Anne Hospital. No one, either at the rue d’Ulm or among his personal friends, wanted to believe that Louis could really have killed his wife. And yet the first verbal autopsy report did show that Hélène’s larynx had been crushed, proving that she had been strangled.

This ‘private’ drama, which plunged their friends into grief, inevitably became a public affair as a result of his fame and stature. It was natural that the press should take hold of it. But not that it should commit a twofold injustice towards Althusser and his wife. First, it was unjust to make a link between Althusser’s philosophical thought and the Ecole Normale tragedy. Some are already hinting that he did not have the qualities required to teach. Others, more odious still, are implying that his communist ideas made him a potential murderer. In reality, the tragedy of 16 November brought to a head the appalling torture of a man who for eighteen years had been fighting against a grave psychological disorder. That Sunday, he was evidently no longer capable of ‘comprehending or willing anything’, so much so that, forty-eight hours later at Sainte-Anne Hospital, the examining magistrate had to give up the idea of serving an indictment upon him. Indecent, then, is the insinuation that he has enjoyed special treatment because of his public name. For while a philosopher should not be above the law, nor should he be deprived of the protection of the French Penal Code, which states that ‘there is no crime or offence when the accused was in a state of insanity at the time of the event’. Another injustice has been the exploitation of Althusser’s wife, Hélène, who was not merely the victim of his madness, but a human being with her own personality, her own work, her own life-history. In most cases, however, I have looked at the papers in vain for a few lines recalling the character and individuality of Hélène’s life.