La névrose de destinée

Abstract

The “Destiny Neurosis” is a psychoanalytic concept described for the first time by Freud in 1920 and then by the psychoanalyst Helen Deutsch, who gave is denomination to it in 1930. According to Freud, the unconscious repetition of tragic destinies is linked to the “repetition compulsion”, underlied by the death drive, opposite to the principle of pleasure. This led some subjects to repeated and involuntary failures and personal tragedies. Helene Deutsch described this feature as a neurotic syndrome, near to hysteria, and underlied by aggressive drives repressed linked to the Oedipus complex. After those initial descriptions, few psychoanalytic studies and more again few psychiatric works have been dedicated to this more or less forgotten syndrome. However, this syndrome corresponds to real clinical situations where some life histories are characterized by the repetition of tragic events. The “Failure Neurosis”, described in 1930 by the French Psychoanalyst René Laforgue is apparented to the “Destiny Neurosis”, when, in a more or less unconscious manner, the subject's biography is marked by repeated failures, and inability to reach any success. We propose clinical criteria for the “Destiny Neurosis”, specially monomorphism of tragic events (for example repeated husband's death, or alcoholic successive marriages…) and the totally ignorance by the patient of the drives of his acts, attributed to hazard or bad luck. Epidemiological and clinical studies would be necessary for a more accurate delimitation of this somehow ignored pathology.