The figure of the symboligenic third party and its avatars in intellectual disability
Mathonnat, Christine
The figure of the symboligenic third party and its avatars in intellectual disability - 2023.
30
In the clinic of intellectual disability, where essential learning in terms of autonomy is laborious or even compromised, the subjects need lasting support in order to claim to be free from dependence on their objects. In the so-called “deficient” subject, there is a risk of incestuousness, which arises from their complete submission to the Nebenmensch, during prolonged nursing care. In these places of disidentifying confusion, the mother-infant dyad thwarts the intersubjective experience when it expels the figure of a symboligenic third party, guarantor of the process of disalienation of a subject-infant who is powerless to conquer a place of subjectivity alone. If the receiving institution does not take care of it, the same phenomenon is replicated in the daily accompaniment of the subject. In conjunction with the “mother function,” we propose a reflection on the psychic function of the third party, the “father function,” in its various aspects, a sine qua non condition to give the mentally “deficient” subject access to subjective appropriation. Our proposal will be supported by some short clinical vignettes of “institutionalized” adult subjects with psychotic characteristics, confronted with the deficit of a regulating principle—institutional and/or intra-familial—which aims to block the incestuous and murderous jouissance.
The figure of the symboligenic third party and its avatars in intellectual disability - 2023.
30
In the clinic of intellectual disability, where essential learning in terms of autonomy is laborious or even compromised, the subjects need lasting support in order to claim to be free from dependence on their objects. In the so-called “deficient” subject, there is a risk of incestuousness, which arises from their complete submission to the Nebenmensch, during prolonged nursing care. In these places of disidentifying confusion, the mother-infant dyad thwarts the intersubjective experience when it expels the figure of a symboligenic third party, guarantor of the process of disalienation of a subject-infant who is powerless to conquer a place of subjectivity alone. If the receiving institution does not take care of it, the same phenomenon is replicated in the daily accompaniment of the subject. In conjunction with the “mother function,” we propose a reflection on the psychic function of the third party, the “father function,” in its various aspects, a sine qua non condition to give the mentally “deficient” subject access to subjective appropriation. Our proposal will be supported by some short clinical vignettes of “institutionalized” adult subjects with psychotic characteristics, confronted with the deficit of a regulating principle—institutional and/or intra-familial—which aims to block the incestuous and murderous jouissance.
Réseaux sociaux