Investigation phénoménologique des formes actuelles de la manie : de l’euphorie à la dysphorie

Objective

The author proposes to take up the phenomenological approach to mania, considering that its presently prevalent semiological form is dysphoric, and no longer, as was classically described, euphoric. After having briefly attempted to formulate some hypotheses relating to the occurrence of this semiological modification, it will be a question of seeking the unity of syndromic mania in spite of, or rather through, these modes of semiological presentation that seem a priori to be radically opposed.

Method

Relying mainly on the founding works relating to the study of manic phenomenality (mainly by Binswanger and Ey), but without leaving the heuristic horizon of psychoanalysis, we will endeavor to circumscribe the reductive constraint (epochè) specific to mania, as well as the directions of phenomenological meaning that characterize it most closely.

Result

Manic depersonalization proceeds, as does melancholy, from a radical form of affective neutralization, whose paradoxical inferences in the registers of spatio-temporality and intersubjectivity will need to be clarified. The manic antinomy (Binswanger), dramatically tightening the chiasmatic knot of life and death, engages the emancipation of extreme tensions mixing expansion and retraction of space and time, which can be represented by the image of a leap (vertiginous or soaring), between flight and fall; while in the domain of inter-subjectivity, the lack of apprehension and a “loud-mouth” form of being determine the characteristic misdirection of the encounter with the other by the manic subject.

Discussion

The manic antinomy joins the melancholic agony to a counter-agonic vital leap, which the daseinsanalytical and psychoanalytical approaches help to clarify. The loss of historicization and even the subjective anonymization that characterize mania as well as melancholy, to the point of making them “a-historical psychoses” (Binswanger), nevertheless leave intact the experience of self-belonging of the Ego, in a form of “pure ego distress” (Binswanger), which we will try to specify.

Conclusion

The mood component (euphoric or dysphoric) ultimately appears vicarious in the manic process. Manic phenomenality stems from an eminently singular affective epoch‘e, touching on trans-possibility (Maldiney), the semiological outcome of which seems linked to the emergence of this tension of nonexistence that totalizes the manic experience, or rather, experimentation.