CHANGE OF NAME BY A PSYCHOTIC PATIENT: IS IT MANIFESTATION OF A PSYCHOPATHOLOGY MISSED UNTIL NOW?

We present a case of a 24-year-old woman who changed her name 3 years after the diagnosis of schizophrenia. She had recurrent thoughts of changing her name for over a year and described her feelings as terrible as if captured in a dark room. She also had obsessional thoughts regarding God talking to her, body image and size. Low self-esteem was a constant feature. The psychopathology of her name changing seemed to be meshed between normal desire, obsessional fixation, overvalued ideas of its benefit, and psychotic thought processes.

Regression in the Analytic Field

Bion hardly ever mentions the concept of regression in the classical sense. However, he uses it to understand whether the direction taken by the therapeutic relationship in the here and now of the session is towards psychic growth or rather in the opposite direction. Therefore, asking oneself what it represents for Bion implies inscribing the concept of regression in the framework of the grid, the kind of conceptual compass that he has built to map the possible evolutions of the unconscious emotional climate (O) that pervades the session at a given moment. The author then reports an entire session with a psychotic patient and illustrates the use that can be made of this notion, paired with that of progress, in the post-Bionian theory of the analytic field.

Female Identification in a Case of Paranoid Psychosis: Rethinking a Practice in the Light of Lacanian Theory

The authors present a clinical case of paranoid psychosis in which the issue of female identification plays a prevalent role. After a brief introduction on the clinical approach to psychosis in Lacan's teaching, the clinical case is exposed and commented on, highlighting in particular (1) the analyst's position; (2) the role of pousse à la femme (“push-towards-woman”) in psychosis; and (3) the therapeutic effects of psychoanalytic treatment for the psychotic patient.