Introduction à une pulsion du mouvement à partir de « L’esquisse d’une Psychologie » de S. Freud. Le cas des mouvements autistiques

Abstract

Aim

The aim of this article is to identify the psychic function of those movements referred to as “wandering and roaming including the motor agitation that certain patients are presenting.” These considerations, which interested the first alienists, are still relevant in contemporary psychopathology, in particular regarding hyperactivity in autism, which will be our main focus. Based on the psychoanalytical concept of the drive, we propose an economic model leading from the body to the psyche, a model of the movement drive operating in clinical psychology.

Method

For this purpose, we will combine data from an epistemological study of the movement drive hypothesis with research on hyperactivity (Jean Bergès, Jean-Marie Forget) and autism (Marie Couvert or Marie Christine Laznik). An in-depth study of one of Freud's pre-psychoanalytical texts will enable us to identify Freud's special interest in the question of movement (Bewegung) rather than motor skills, and its effects on the psychic structuring of the new-born child at the dawn of its encounter with its environment.

Results

It will then be possible to develop a model of a movement drive and its structuring effects: on the body, from motor agitation to the appropriate action, and on the psyche by the construction of the subject's own singular spaces. On the basis of this theoretical model, we will identify what we call “continuous walking” in autistic subjects.

Discussion

We will then discuss whether or not each individual/human subject is able to move within the space produced by the structure; in other words, the possibility of a differential diagnosis based on the question of movement and the appropriation of space.

Conclusion

The movement drive finds coherence in psychoanalytical writings, and proves to be effective for thinking about the support of the suffering individual/human subject, taking into account the articulation between body, psyche, and space.