Madness and Otherness: Moments of Possibility

Since Freud's time, psychoanalysis has been invested in engaging with our shifting awareness of “otherness.” Michael Eigen (2018b) calls it “one of the farthest reaching mysteries of the human self … that its sense of boundaries shifts in radical ways” (p. 139). The present article reflects work with a psychotic male patient. Psychosis is a psychic condition where the game of peek-a-boo with Otherness becomes profound. This article touches on struggles in negotiating and renegotiating the analyst's status as Other when faced with a patient who tries to undo this gap. In these negotiations, different forms of communication emerge as the therapist and patient try to find ways of engaging with madness. In working with psychotic states, time for reverie is a luxury not often afforded the therapist. Writing this article has been akin to a form of reverie that sessions tended to short-circuit, a kind of reverie writing in which clinical details intermingle with cultural images and memories.