Jean-Claude Maleval's Psychoanalytical Conversations say a lot about psychoses

Published by Érès with the support of the Centre national du livre, the simple review of the introduction to this collection would already be satisfying. Not that the “revised and expanded” texts proposed by Jean-Claude Maleval are of limited interest. Quite the contrary. However, the dozen or so pages that open these Psychoanalytical Conversations with Ordinary and Extraordinary Psychotics contain assertions and other clinical innovations capable of shaking the doctrinal tree. Certainly, there is no surprise in this author''s constant and incisive criticism of the “dead end of the descriptive strategy” adopted by successive DSMs and reduced to independent of human history and cultural variations”. Moreover, this in an environment characterized by a “spectacular” increase in requests for psychoanalysis by subjects with a psychotic structure. The clinician briefly explains the reasons: the introduction of the diagnosis of ordinary psychosis, the sharpening of its identification and a better knowledge of the conduct of the treatment. A trend reinforced a contrario by the negative effects of a “deterioration of the conditions in which patients receive in psychiatric institutions”.

Keywords:

Jean-Claude Maleval , Psychoanalytical Conversations , psychoses