Psychotraumatisme, « réel de la mort » et travail psychique infantile sur la mort

Abstract

AimsThis paper sets out to explore the possible link between the development of psychotrauma in certain subjects and the formation, during childhood, of a “knowledge” staging death as a complete annihilation, whereby the subject not only disappears in the flesh, but also and above all in the thoughts of those close to him. This “knowledge” formed in childhood could prevent the advent of an essential psychic process, which is work on death. This psychic process, which often accompanies the discovery that death is universal and irreversible, can be seen as a fundamental matrix for all future processing of trauma, often envisaged as being encounters with the “reality of death”, since they enables the subject to position him or herself in a continuity that extends beyond his or her own existence. Thus we set out to study the importance of this work on death in childhood, the psychic consequences of failure in this area, and the possible early birth of a knowledge of death that is “silenced”, but liable to re-emerge at the time of a later traumatic event. MethodsFirst, on the basis of psychic work with two children aged four and four and a half we present the different stages in work with children on death, and the unconscious processes arising. Second, the cases of two female patients, one adolescent and one adult, make it possible to apprehend the psychic consequences when the above process fails. Alongside, we also explore particular psychic configurations (positions of identification, temporal figures) that accompany the formation of knowledge about death that is neither put into words nor remembered. ResultsIn the context of the discovery of death and its realities, paradoxically, work on death gives the child a stronger feeling of continuing existence. The task for the child is to return through the depressive phase that will accompany this mourning by anticipation. Ultimately, this process enables the child to position him or herself in the generational lineage, and to form a memory (his and that of others) as a narcissistic refuge beyond death. Different personal narratives show that certain subjects are unable to build themselves a refuge of this sort, and that death appears to them as sheer annihilation, with nothing of life surviving death. Thus the encounter with the reality of death takes the form, for some subjects, of a reinstatement of this certainty, and thus the assurance of their own annihilation, and sometimes the confirmation that they have always been dead. DiscussionOn the basis of these different elements, we can first of all consider the setbacks that the child will encounter in work on death. Indeed, some are required to renounce, under pressure from those around him or her, who refuse or avoid (especially if the child is young) talking about death, or who elude it via religious discourse. What are the effects of interruptions of this sort ? Do they also lead to scenarios that stage certainties ? Do they produce temporal distortions ? And what can later enable the child to return to this work, to see it out ? It would also be worthwhile exploring the conditions enabling this work to be undertaken in a transference relationship. It possible that sometimes, within the scope of the work accompanying the end of certain cures, it will re-emerge, well after the deconstruction of the alienating certainties of childhood has occurred. ConclusionIn these clinical encounters, we can see that work on death with children is above all work on the links between life and death, which make a major contribution to the feeling of continuity of existence. Thus a matrix forms, and it will later enable the triggering of a process of symbolization, restoring the temporality to language, and enabling the subject to redefine the boundaries that the trauma has upset. Conversely, when this work cannot occur, most often as a result of a traumatic family history, we see the formation of the certainty of a death coinciding with the fall from the psychic space of the other, and thus with sheer annihilation. It is the re-emergence of these certainties at the time of an encounter with the reality of death that can lead to psychotrauma. The subject has undergone an intolerable identification process – since his or her non-existence, or the notion that he or she has always been dead, is confirmed – whether it takes the form of withdrawal of the other, or even the form of murder.