Sur l’ennui pathologique

Abstract

ObjectivesIn this text, we’ll question boredom. We’ll try to distinguish between “normal” boredom, which is common, and “pathological” boredom. In this case, the subject seems to be affected by a deep boredom, a boredom of life itself, which has always been there, which is constantly present, and without hope of change. MethodologyA clinical vignette will introduce our presentation. A review of the psychiatric literature will show that the question of boredom is rarely studied nowadays whereas pathological boredom was frequently addressed in the great classics of the nineteenth century, especially in its links with melancholy. A review of the psychoanalytic literature will help us to distinguish between the boredom proper to the structure of any neurotic subject, and the pathological boredom that can be encountered in some forms of psychosis. ResultsThe question of boredom, whatever the form it takes for everyone, shows in all cases its inextricable link with the relation to Other, with desire, with time. In its psychotic variation, “mortal” boredom also shows its links to loss, grief, and death, and is similar to some forms of melancholy. This boredom is an example of the Lacanian Real, not framed by the Symbolic dimension. DiscussionThe discussion is essentially about the status of the Other of the subject, of the relationship between subject and Other, an Other which may or may not give way to desire, lack, symbolization of the loss of the object, life or death, opening or not to the possibility of a hope of “Something Else” (Lacan), a possible or closed horizon. ConclusionEven if boredom has no diagnostic value as such, even if it does not constitute a pathognomonic symptom of a particular clinical category, its study and the attention that the clinician must bring to it in terms of the statements and the mode of enunciation on the part of the bored subject remain of great interest. Boredom is “a separate manifestation, and thus finds its place, if not in the clinic, at least in psychopathology” (E. Minkowski).