Pour une éthique, une citrique et une clinique de l'inutile en psychopathologie phénoménologie

Abstract

Clinical work with schizophrenia interrogates an essential dimension of choices and decisions in the clinical process, particularly with regard to the narrative verbalization of lived experience. Classically, it is held that an intersubjective encounter centered on deep experience can be a decisive moment for people (whether they are mentally ill or not). This aspect of therapy (certainly influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis) allows one to unfold the world in which the subject expresses himself, implicitly suggesting that, once unfolded, the world then becomes more livable. This therapeutic gain is achieved through a relational, collective act—a co-constructed discourse between the subject and the therapist. That said, people in distress often display an excessive reliance on the narrative dimension of the self, and it is now clearly established that this is particularly the case in schizophrenia, owing to the phenomenon of hyper-reflexivity. From this standpoint, I would like to discuss the observation that the main therapeutic solution—the discourse about experience—overlaps with the cardinal symptom of schizophrenia—the discourse about experience (even though, of course, nuances must be added to this observation). I will examine the ethical and clinical repercussions of such a finding. I would like to suggest that a coherent and pertinent therapeutic avenue, for schizophrenic patients who are people that question life rather than live it, may be to help them participate less in this technical knowing of experience and to meet them at the pre-reflective level. The aim, then, is to propose sequences that allow people with schizophrenia to recover the insouciance of life, the naiveté and spontaneity of a lived experience that finally ceases to question itself. It will be a matter of encountering what I will call an ethics of the useless.