La violence de la rage en clinique institutionnelle

Abstract

In institution, the teams have difficulties to cope with the violent demonstrations of the rage. The analysis of the rage in its intersubjective dimension brings a comprehensive model to their containing work. The rage replies to an attempt of differentiation of the subject, according to the process of the destruction of the primary object: 1) The rage has been theoretically defined by Kohut as an impulsive reaction facing a narcissistic injury. The need of the other becomes inside its own movement with the model of the “destruction of the object”, extracted by Roussillon from the works of Winnicott on “the use of an object”; 2) Four vignettes put to the test this hypothesis. These clinical interventions come from the analysis of practices or the supervision of team (psychiatry services, home of handicapped adults or children, foster home); 3) Finally, the analysis shows that the rage is linked with the psychic envelope's dynamic. The rage appears in very different structures in psychopathology. It is as an explosive movement which jumbles the borders or the psychic envelopes. Its different forms are concomitant to the variations of the subject–object differentiation according to pathologies (autism, psychosis, borderline pathologies). It is an attempt of repeated differentiation of the psychic envelops or spaces between the subject and his objects. So, in institution, its transformation depends on the recognition of its origin (the “ruthless love” in primitive relations) by the containing function of the team.