Expérience sensorielle et affective du lien dans le cadre du psychotraumatisme. Médiation thérapeutique par le théâtre

Abstract

ObjectivesThis article retraces part of the accompaniment of a ten-year-old boy in a special education program. This article raises questions about the child's behavior, which oscillated between fury and tranquillity, as if there was only one step between the two. The authors focus on the functional particularity of psychotrauma which, by its weight, splits certain psychic zones from the rest of the sensory world. They try to understand the link, in its sensory and affective dimension, between areas that no longer participate in the subject's psychic life and the rest of the sensory world, within the precise framework of psychotrauma. MethodThe authors combine art therapy techniques with a psychoanalytical approach, combining the art of theater with the metaphorical capacity offered by Dixit cards. This particular theater, called “Dixian Theatre,” offers a place of scenic expression where the appearance of fury is not stopped, but delimited. ResultsIn this space, and through the accompaniment of the therapists, it appears that the violence of this young boy manifests itself on stage; the child is not in the grip of furor, and the violence that he enacts is bearable for all. The child is gradually able to link his present moments of fury to the terrible events of his past. DiscussionThe device proposed by the authors gives rise to a particular transferential relationship where the clinician becomes the place of deposit of a psychic reality that could not have been elaborated until that moment. The therapist then becomes the link of an associative chain promoting the restitution of psychic content that the child can reappropriate. ConclusionThe clinical support system encourages bodily expression and the adult's reverie. The theater, which became therapeutic, is able to help relaunch a psychic movement, after certain contents had become inaccessible and bruised by trauma. The child can then regain access to a temporal dynamic mixing a “before,” a “during,” and an “after” trauma.