« La semaine prochaine, je serai sorti ». La psychothérapie à l’épreuve du temps en milieu carcéral

Objective

The aim of this article is to describe the way in which the announced release from prison precipitates the work of linking in the final stages of psychotherapeutic work, and to illustrate the transferential modalities involved. More specifically, we examine the fates and functions of what we propose to call a “hallucinatory temporality” in psychotherapy, at the dawn of the announcement of release from prison.

Method

To illustrate our ideas, we will use the case of Joël, who has been detained in custody for armed robbery, and is in a state of legal recidivism. This patient was receiving weekly psychotherapy in prison and had been seen in a care unit in the few months prior to his release.

Results

In this article, we wanted to illustrate the way in which release from prison, as a negative of the shock of imprisonment, can affect the subject's fantasy life, between anticipation and impulse realization.

Discussion

The defenses mobilized by Joël during the interview seemed to us to be particularly relevant in the way in which they pressed on the drive in the service of the rise in tension, thus producing an effect of reversal from the passive pole to the active pole, even in the time of the session. This temporality, over-invested in its risk thresholds between getting out and staying in, seemed to us to draw artificial contours like so many fantasmatic stopping points to force the representational system in favor of a hallucinatory circulation with masturbatory functions.

Conclusion

If, from the perspective of Roussillon's work cited above, we conceive of symbolization as an experience of subjectivation through domination, it is easy here to see how the ramparts of the therapeutic setting can act as a hallucinatory crossroads, at the tempting moment of dreaming, or at least trying to “hallucinate” the way out. The support of this hallucinatory space – from temporal circularity to fantasmatic temporality – seems to us to benefit from the inter-holding put to work and described by Ciavaldini, even in its transferential manifestations in the session. Beyond the session, as “beyond the wall”, would thus put to the test the solidity of the psychic rampart fashioned by a path other than that of domination.