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Racamier distinguishes madness (Jolie) from psychosis. The former is a psychological concept, while the latter is a psychopathological one. Madness is a complex notion involving in some instances blindness and emptiness, yet there is an old tradition of the folly of fools revealing truths others are not allowed to say. Racamier
compares this to Freud's comments on negation and suggests that in the folly of fools is to be found the prototype of humor. For humor, like the fools of kings and princes, operates by frustrating the narcissistic pretensions of its author and, by tacit complicity, of the auditor and of mankind.
Racamier discusses the strategy of madness, which he believes involves a sort of trap into which the ego is taken. He discusses the psychological booby trap as presented in the novel, Catch 22, and the double bind presented by schizophrenic mothers. Such techniques and strategies are used in the service of narcissistic preservation in humor as well as in psychosis. Humor succeeds, however, where the preservation attempt fails in psychosis. For, in humor the king and fool are united; there is a differentiation of the self-image and the ideal self. In support of this, Racamier cites Kohut's observation that in the therapy of narcissistic patients humor makes its appearance when the differentiation between the ideal self and the concept of the self takes place. In humor the ego puts itself in peril, just as in psychosis, but the difference is that the purpose of humor is to master the peril. The defeat of the ego is played with only in order to affirm its survival and integrity. The folly of a psychotic cannot be such a game.