La dangerosité : un concept psychopathologique ?

Abstract

Dangerousness, recent concept towards the reality it seeks to identify, can be defined as the statistical quantification of a risk of acting out. It appears in a border location, both for the subject by questioning the uncertain passage of an impulsive violence of psychic life in a violence acted out in external reality, and in its reports to his environment, which would be threatened by his potential dangerousness. The dangerousness first appears as a medico-legal concept, about which we question here the relevance in the field of clinic and psychopathology. If the problem of acting out seems central, various perspectives of understanding are outlined, particularly by formulating the hypothesis of a dangerousness understood as the subjective response to a feeling of vital threat: the dreaded acting out would not belong as much to the register of attack and aggressiveness as an expression of defense and safeguard response of the subject in front of danger of a threatening object. The impossibility of adjusting the distance between subject and object requires the control of the latter until engage its possible destruction in order to restore a constantly broken balance between narcissistic investment and objectal investment. If it seems possible to identify subjective stakes in the concept of dangerousness, it is especially to deconstruct its structure in clinical practice to grasp the meaning it could cover for a subject tackled in his singularity.