You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychanalyse et Psychose is the annual publication of the évelyne and Jean Kestemberg Centre, a Centre for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis created by René Angelergues and Jean Kestemberg within the Mental Health Association of the 13th district in Paris (with which the names of R. Diatkine, S. Lébovici and P.-C. Racamier are associated, insofar as they successfully introduced psychoanalysis there within a public sector psychiatric structure in the 1950's).
évelyne Kestemberg, who was the first director of the Centre for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, belongs to the second generation of French psychoanalysts who were involved in psychiatric care structures, and who were thus led to think about psychosis psychoanalytically. A particular feature of her theoretical and clinical contribution is the notion of ‘cold (or non-delusional) psychosis’, in which the narcissistic-object conflict is resolved by an attempt to reify the object.
The E. and J. Kestemberg Centre, currently run by Alain Gibeault, aims to pursue the initial ambition of its founders of giving psychotic patients an alternative space to that of psychiatry, with a view to establishing possible links between psychoanalysis and psychosis.
The Review Psychoanalyse et Psychose, whose chief editor is Liliane Abensour, seeks to reflect the questions, reflections and clinical papers arising from the Centre's activity, associating the texts of its own practitioners with those of colleagues from other treatment structures with a similar orientation, and sometimes with classical texts, each volume being devoted to a specific theme.
The theme of the latest volume, ‘The Enigma of Reality’, invites us to reflect on an essential question, because while psychosis is currently defined by the loss of the sense of reality, psychoanalysis itself aims to recognize the full value of psychical reality.
The introduction by Liliane Abensour, ‘Psychical reality, material reality’, provides an overview of the main issues of debate, wh