Citation

De Masi F. Int. J. Psychoanal. 2015; 96(5): 1189-1211.

Affiliation

Full Member of Italian Psychoanalytic Society, via Ramazzini 7, Milano 20129, Italy. franco.demasi@fastwebnet.it.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Institute of Psychoanalysis, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1745-8315.12317

PMID

26298703

Abstract

The delusional experience is the result of a grave disjunction in the psyche whose outcome is not readily predictable. Examination of the specific mode of disjunction may help us understand the nature and radical character of delusion. I will present the therapy of a psychotic patient who after many years of analysis and progresses in his life continues to show delusional episodes although limited and contained. In his case, the two visions, one delusional and the other real, remain distinct and differentiated from each other because they both possess the same perceptual character, that of reality. He has a bi-ocular vision of reality and not a binocular one because his vision lacks integration, as would necessarily be the case if the two visions could be compared with each other. The principle of non-contradiction ceases to apply in delusion. A corollary of the failure of the principle of non-contradiction is that, if a statement and its negation are both true, then any statement is true. Logicians call this consequence the principle of explosion. For this reason, the distinction between truth, reality, improbability, probability, possibility and impossibility is lost in the delusional system, thus triggering an omnipotent, explosive mechanism with a potentially infinite progression. The paper presents some thoughts for a possible analytic transformation of the delusional experience.

Language: en