« On bat un vieillard » : une figure des fantasmes de fustigation dans le grand vieillissement

Abstract

AimIn this paper, we analyze the psychic issues entailed in mistreatment fantasies that are expressed, sometimes insistently, in the discourse of some elderly people finding themselves in a situation of dependency. MethodThis study is based on a psychodynamic understanding of psychic functioning, and it also uses clinical vignettes. We explore the fantasy of “the elderly person being beaten” which casts light on a particular mode of processing of the issues of castration and passivity, re-contextualised in the care setting and care relationships. ResultsThe pervasiveness of this fantasy appears as an attempt to bind the excitation caused by the difficulty in accepting a passive position. It also shows that the acute narcissistic issues of old extreme old age do not compromise Oedipal conflict and sexual identification issues. The re-emergence of these issues enables psychic work which can lead to new modes of elaboration. DiscussionThese considerations lead us to envisage the psychopathological characteristics of the encounter with dependency in old age in the light of the tensions between external reality and the internal world. Otherwise the risk is that the distinction between the manifest content of dependency – linked in particular to current biological and social parameters – and the psychic context in which this content is reshaped will be abolished. ConclusionAbove and beyond the evident social relationships of domination, this study aims to draw attention to the masochistic and melancholic modes of passivity that can be mobilized in this fantasized configuration.