Delphine Scotto di Vettimo, Claude Miollan : Between Shame and Psychosis: A Reflection on Assumed Knowledge

Psychotherapeutic treatment of adolescents confronted with a psychotic experience reveals a characteristic feeling of shame. The first hypothesis formulated here addresses the existence of shame in such psychotic individuals based on archaic experience calling into question the Freudian, and classic, conceptual tool of post-Œdipal structural shame. The second hypothesis postulates that in clinical work the expression of shame as an ontological challenge against the Other represents an attempt by the subject to prove his or her existence. Our reflection focuses, through a clinical analysis, on the double occurrence of psychotic experience and a feeling of shame.