Abstract

AimAlthough death seems to be increasingly dissimulated in our Western society, “death-dodger” behaviors, on the contrary, are constantly on the rise. The study of those who practice high-risk sports allows us to clearly see their game with/around/against death. Through the case of Kevin, who engages in tremendously risky behavior in his practice of sport, we propose to show how continued traumaphilia and flirting with death is an attempt to deal with multiple griefs, as well as an illusory attempt to restore a frail narcissism, weakened by losses and mournings that remain unresolved. MethodThe authors conducted a case study, with exemplary value, combining two unstructured-type research interviews as well as the administration of the Rorschach and TAT tests, with a retest one month later. These tests were analyzed according to the principles of the French school. ResultsIn addition to an identification with masculinity and virility, lethal risk-taking in sports can also be understood, in our case study, as a fight against the effects of multiple bereavements and the associated depression. This is the anti-depressive struggle that is at the forefront of psychological functioning and that becomes part of the masochism expressed in “traumaphilia,” constituting the last defense against the risk of an otherwise more disruptive collapse. DiscussionThe authors propose the notion of “sepulcher work” – borrowing R. Gori's and M.-J. Del Volgo's use of the expression, with reference to M. de M’Uzan's formula on the work of passing over – to define the stage of mourning in which it is recognized that the object has indeed been definitively lost. Sepulcher work, for us, consists in a psychological movement in which the subject who has lost her/his object admits that this loss is final: the first recognition of the principle of reality prior to the work of mourning. ConclusionsThe risk-taking in sports reported in the case studied here illustrates unique clinical situations in which the process of mourning could not begin, leading to depression. These psychopathological configurations do not constitute a homogeneous clinical picture, but illustrate, in their own way, psychological strategies to avoid facing the suffering of loss.

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