Le Schizophrène en Mal D'objet*, by Vassilis Kapsambelis, Paris,  PUF, coll. Le fil rouge, 2020, €25, ISBN 978-2-13 08-2275-2

Following on from many previous works exploring psychoanalytic thought in psychiatry, Vassilis Kapsambelis has examined in his latest book the therapeutic relationship between a schizophrenic patient and the object of investment that their therapist proposes to become for them. To do this, he relies both on a rich clinical experience recounted with as much vivacity as simplicity, and on a subtle metapsychological analysis. Beginning with a rigorous definition of the specificities of schizophrenia, he then reflects on the qualities of an “object for schizophrenic” without losing sight of Freudian propositions. The book is interspersed with clinical case histories, some of which span several decades, illustrating theoretical developments by way of thoughtful and well-known accounts. The author concludes his reflection with a plea for a topography that takes into account the object as co-author of the construction of the subject.

First and foremost, Kapsambelis specifies the particularities of schizophrenia, contrary to the contemporary tendency to group psychoses in a kind of extended and vague spectrum.

Indeed, the specificity of the therapeutic relationship required by the schizophrenic patient stems from the understanding of the specificity of their psychopathology. In fact, this is closely linked to the vagaries of the psychic integration of pubertal changes. During the adolescent process, the encounter with an object located “outside one’s own body” allows the advent of genitality. The author develops the idea that at that moment, the schizophrenic individual engages in a struggle between the non-acceptance of the object and the inextinguishable need they have for this object. If a therapeutic relationship allows it, the resumption of an evolutionary dynamic is possible to get out of this dilemma. It is this relationship that Kapsambelis undertakes to describe through his three stages: the objectal interposition of the ob