Le cas « Oblomov » : entre philosophie du non-agir, nihilisme existentiel et modèle de psychasthénie appliquée

Abstract

AimIt is essential to distrust shortcuts, inferences, and generalizations, but it must be noted that literature can offer unique explanations about personality disorders or often even delve into a subtle, unexpected description of a more complex syndromic case or psychopathological model that we are familiar with. I. Goncharov, through the character of Oblomov, allows us to revisit the concept of psychasthenia that Pierre Janet described in 1903. As a disciple of T. Ribot, who he would follow as chair of experimental and comparative psychology at the College de France, and as a contemporary of Freud, with whom he disagreed on the way of “thinking about neurosis” (in terms of conflict for one, and in terms of deficit for the other), P. Janet would also develop the idea of the subconscious. His work, “Obsessions and Psychasthenia” was the first to describe obsessions and compulsions clearly and coherently, and to put forward the idea of an original psychological therapy, as well as an explanatory model. I hereby wish to pay tribute to him. Over and above the indisputable therapeutic virtues of literature, I seek to know how a novel can help the clinician to better understand a concept, an era, or even support a diagnostic hypothesis. MethodWe shall consider literary fiction as an opening onto a parallel world, the realm of the psychiatric, updated by a reader's activity, memories, references, and subjectivity. Through a comparative analysis, a sort of meta-theater between the life story of the main character (Oblomov) and the reactivation of more operational diagnostic criteria, I shall try to bring a founding concept of our discipline to light. ResultsAn extremely subtle psychiatric state (in this case psychasthenia) gradually becomes perceptible, one that will be authenticated using the conventional descriptions that we know. DiscussionThis raises the question of the place that the novel reserves for mental disorders. Through an empathetic and nuanced representation of mental illnesses, it makes all their complexity perceptible from the inside, in the light of standards that evolve over time, reflections of the given era and society. ConclusionLiterature allows us to reflect upon “madness” (as a social and cultural object), in the sense that the former reflects the latter, thereby allowing us to reconsider it.