When Darkness Draws Us In: What Crime Stories Reveal About Us

There is something profoundly human in our fascination with crime novels, true‑crime series, and stories that venture into the darkest corners of the mind. We watch them late at night, sometimes to distract ourselves, sometimes to soothe ourselves, sometimes without knowing what we are really seeking. As if, by observing the unthinkable in another, we were trying to tame what remains opaque within us. Freud noted that crime, even in fiction, awakens archaic echoes. He wrote that human beings carry aggressive impulses they prefer not to acknowledge, and that fiction offers a safe space to approach them. Lacan later insisted that acting out emerges where speech fails, where the subject can no longer find an address for their suffering. Perhaps this is what fascinates us: the attempt to understand what, in another, broke the symbolic thread. In crime stories, the act is never just an act. It is an enigma. An enigma that reassures us because it promises resolution. An enigma that soothes us because it stages what we fear without forcing us to live it. An enigma that allows us to look at human violence from a distance, as if through glass. Reality is never so clear. During my work contributing to psychiatric assessments at the Infirmerie Psychiatrique de la Préfecture de Police at Sainte‑Anne in Paris, I encountered acts that arrived raw, unfiltered, sometimes terrifying. And yet, even there, something was trying to speak. It is in such places that the legacy of De Clérambault becomes strikingly alive. Working at Sainte‑Anne himself, he described with almost surgical precision the mechanisms of delusion, mental automatisms, and inner compulsions. He showed that behind even the most bewildering act lies a logic, an internal coherence, a psychic necessity. This is not justification. It is an attempt to understand what, in the subject’s economy, made the unthinkable possible. The role of the psychiatric or psychological expert is not to judge. It is to illuminate. To understand what, in a subject’s history, in their psychic structure, in their collapses, made an unthinkable act possible. Bénézech, in his work on forensic psychiatry, reminded us that expertise is neither defense nor accusation, but perspective. It situates the act within a trajectory, a delusion, a disorganization, a fracture. In several trials, expert testimony has been decisive. It has distinguished a psychotic break from deliberate intent. It has revealed the mental disorganization of someone who, at the time of the act, no longer had access to reality. It has shown that a violent gesture was sometimes the last attempt to escape an internal collapse. Where the press speaks of monsters, expertise speaks of structure, delusion, fragmentation, desubjectivation. Where media narratives simplify, expertise complicates. Irvin Yalom wrote that understanding is not forgiving, but understanding soothes. Perhaps this is what we seek in crime stories: a form of soothing. A way to look at human violence without being swallowed by it. A way to believe that the enigma can be solved, that chaos can be ordered, that meaning can be found. In real life, meaning is never given. It is built. It is searched for. It is worked through. The expert does not deliver an absolute truth. They offer a reading, a hypothesis, a perspective. They attempt to restore to the subject a part of their humanity, even where the act seems to have erased it. Perhaps we love crime stories because they offer a bearable version of this work. A version where the investigation ends, where the culprit is identified, where truth can be grasped. A version where we can close the book or turn off the screen believing order has been restored. Life is never so simple. But that is precisely why clinical work exists: to welcome what cannot be resolved in forty‑five minutes, to hear what cannot be said, to illuminate what remains obscure. To remind us that behind every act, even the most unthinkable, there is a subject, a history, a wound, a fracture. And perhaps that is what draws us so deeply to crime stories: the possibility of looking at the shadow without losing ourselves in it. The possibility of understanding, just a little more, what in each of us still seeks a form of light. REFERENCES  Bénézech, M. (2004). Legal Psychiatry and Criminology. Paris: Masson. De Clérambault, G.-G. (1942). Psychiatric Works. Paris: PUF. Freud, S. (1916/2010). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Lacan, J. (1955/2013). The Seminar, Book III: The Psychoses. New York: Norton. Lacan, J. (1966). Écrits. London: Routledge. Racamier, P.-C. (1992). The Genius of Origins. Paris: Payot. Yalom, I. D. (1989). Love’s Executioner. New York: Basic Books.

When Anger Speaks: Listening to the Child Through Their Storms

A child’s anger is never just an overflow. It is a language. A call. A sometimes clumsy, sometimes desperate attempt to express something that has not yet found its words. In my consultation, I meet children of two, four, seven, ten years old, and each carries their anger like a garment that is either too big or too tight. It never says the same thing. It never comes from the same place. It never asks for the same response. Winnicott reminded us that a child can only develop if they find an environment capable of holding their emotions without crushing them. Anger, in this sense, is not a problem; it is a sign of life. Dolto said that a child who becomes angry is a child trying to be heard. Lebovici emphasized the importance of understanding anger within the relationship, within the link, within the child’s history. Nothing is ever isolated. Nothing is ever simple. At two years old, anger is often a brief, violent, total storm. The child does not yet know how to wait, to defer, to symbolize. They live in immediacy. They want, they refuse, they demand, they collapse. Their anger is a sensory thunderstorm. It says, “I don’t yet know how to do otherwise.” It says, “Help me contain myself.” It says, “Stay close.” Daniel Stern described this moment as an age when the child discovers their own power, but also their own helplessness. Anger is then a way of feeling alive. At four or five years old, anger changes shape. It becomes more theatrical, more relational. The child tests, provokes, opposes. They search for limits to make sure they exist. They search for the adult to make sure they hold. Didier Houzel wrote that parenthood is a living space, sometimes fragile, sometimes wounded, and that a child’s anger often touches the adult’s own vulnerabilities. At this age, anger says, “See me.” It says, “Don’t leave me alone with what I feel.” It says, “Help me understand what is happening inside me.” At seven or eight years old, anger becomes more complex. The child begins to perceive social rules, school expectations, comparisons. They may feel overwhelmed, humiliated, misunderstood. Their anger may be a mask for shame, fear, sadness. It may be a way of saying they do not feel up to the task. A way of saying they cannot find their place. Lebovici noted that children of this age live in a rich but fragile inner world, and that anger can be an attempt to protect that world. At ten years old, anger sometimes takes on the tone of early adolescence. It becomes more verbal, more argued, more directed. It may be a way of separating, of asserting oneself, of saying “I” in front of the adult. It may also be a way of hiding a deep vulnerability. Winnicott saw these angers as a sign that the child begins to feel secure enough to dare to contest. Anger then says, “I am growing.” It says, “Let me try.” It says, “Don’t abandon me for all that.” At every age, anger is a message. It is never a whim. Never a flaw. Never a sign of poor parenting. It is an enigma. An enigma the child entrusts to us, sometimes without wanting to, sometimes without knowing it. And it is up to us, adults, to unfold it with them. Supporting anger means first recognizing it. Telling the child, “I see this is hard.” Offering them a space where they can calm down without being shamed. Showing them that their emotions do not destroy us. Teaching them, little by little, to put words where there were only cries. Teaching them to breathe, to wait, to ask. Teaching them that they are not alone. Anger is a passage. A passage sometimes rough, sometimes painful, but always alive. It says that the child is searching for their place. It says they are bumping into the world. It says they need us to learn how to navigate their storms. And perhaps our role, in the end, is not to extinguish anger, but to listen to it. To hold it. To translate it. To transform it with the child into something that will one day allow them to express differently what they feel. REFERENCES  Dolto, F. (1985). When the Child Appears. Paris: Gallimard. Houzel, D. (1999). The Stakes of Parenthood. Paris: PUF. Lebovici, S. (1983). The Infant, the Mother and the Psychoanalyst. Paris: Bayard. Stern, D. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.

The Fart as a Language of the Body: Between Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Everyday Clinical Practice

Sometimes it’s helpful to shift our gaze toward the most ordinary gestures to better understand the invisible dynamics that shape us. Observing behavioral differences between ourselves and others—and the internal tension this can provoke—can become an opportunity for learning and introspection. What we perceive as discomfort or provocation, such as a simple fart, may in fact reflect our personal history, our inner state, and that of others. Exploring this interaction, even in its triviality, helps us better situate ourselves in relation to others and opens the door to a form of everyday clinical practice, where the body speaks as much as words do. Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his work on rites and symbolic structures, did not address farting directly, but his analyses allow us to consider this act as meaningful within cultural systems. In The Way of the Masks and Mythologiques, he shows how fundamental oppositions—pure/impure, nature/culture, visible/invisible—are expressed through codified bodily practices. The fart, as an invisible yet perceptible emission, could be read as a reversal of polarity between inside and outside, between the hidden and the revealed, between the private and the social. Lévi-Strauss emphasized that rites and myths reflect universal mental structures, and that bodily practices, even the most trivial, participate in this organization of meaning. In some cultures, farting is integrated into social life without particular shame. In Papua New Guinea, it may be part of ritual games or informal communication. In rural China, public toilets are sometimes doorless, and it’s common to see children defecating in public, wearing split pants with an opening at the crotch. This practice, linked to natural infant hygiene, shows that bodily emissions are not necessarily taboo in these contexts. Bodily sounds are not systematically repressed, unlike in Japan, where toilets are often equipped with sound-masking devices that play music or water sounds to conceal bodily noises. This technology reflects a deep-seated social discomfort, especially among women, and a desire to preserve modesty and bodily control in public spaces by erasing any audible trace of intimacy. From the perspective of clinical psychology and psychoanalysis, farting can be read as an expression of internal conflict, psychic defenses, and modes of expressing discomfort. Freud identified the anal phase as central to the development of the relationship to the body, authority, and control. Farting, as an uncontrolled expulsion, can be a failed act, a discharge of instinctual energy, or a passive provocation. It may express an unconscious conflict between the desire to transgress and the social prohibition. Wilhelm Reich, in his character analysis, saw bodily relaxation as a release of muscular defenses, allowing repressed affects to surface. Farting can thus function as a defense against anxiety, a way to regulate internal tension without using language. Jacques Lacan, although he did not address farting directly, considered the body as a surface of jouissance and language. The fart can then be seen as an involuntary signifier, a rupture of the symbolic order, a bodily event that disrupts discourse. It can also be interpreted as disinhibition, reflecting a loosening of internalized norms, or regression to earlier developmental stages. In romantic relationships, it may signal a break in the seduction pact, a trivialization of the body, or even neglect of the emotional bond. The odor it emits evokes a primary, archaic olfactory trace that allows the subject to feel they exist—for themselves and for others. It conjures fecal matter, rejection, animality, but also proximity and intimacy. It can awaken family memories, childhood atmospheres, domestic practices. Some patients in therapy describe families where farting was common, tolerated, even joked about. Others recall environments where any bodily sound was repressed and associated with shame. The fart then becomes a symptom: it speaks of the subject’s history, their relationship to the body, to law, to desire. Even cinema has taken up this sound. In The Nutty Professor (1996), Eddie Murphy plays an entire family farting at the dinner table in a burlesque scene that became iconic. Beneath the humor, one can read a collective disinhibition, a transgression of social norms, and a portrayal of the body as a site of pleasure and chaos. To propose a new perspective on farting is to take a step sideways. It’s to consider that it can be an object of analysis within an everyday clinical framework, where the most banal gestures become carriers of meaning. This reflection invites us to listen to the body in its most trivial yet revealing expressions. And what if, in the end, it’s not the subject who speaks… but the fart that takes the floor? A breath from deep within, saying what the mouth cannot, asserting itself where language hesitates. Because sometimes, in the silence of social conventions, it’s the most unexpected sound that lets the unconscious be heard. References Freud, S. (1901). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Paris: PUF. Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Paris: Gallimard. Reich, W. (1933). Character Analysis. Paris: Payot. Lacan, J. (1966). Écrits. Paris: Seuil. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1979). The Way of the Masks. Paris: Plon. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1964–1971). Mythologiques (4 volumes). Paris: Plon. Shadyac, T. (Director). (1996). The Nutty Professor [Film]. Universal Pictures.

Marie Nussbaum
16 Dec, 2025

When the Body Disappears for Too Long: Mourning Without Ritual and the Search for Symbolization

There are forms of mourning that open in a particular kind of silence. Mourning in which the body of the deceased disappears for months, sometimes years, because it has been donated to science. Mourning in which the relatives remain in a strange suspension, caught between gratitude for the gesture and the pain of being deprived of what has always helped humans say goodbye: a body, a place, a ritual, a name carved somewhere. In my consultation, I have met adult children who lived through this. Two years of waiting to recover the body of a parent. Two years without a ceremony, without a grave, without a date, without a collective gesture. Two years in which mourning could neither begin nor continue. Two years in which absence remained raw, without form, without contour. Two years in which pain had no place to go. Freud wrote that the work of mourning consists in gradually withdrawing the psychic investment from the deceased in order to redirect it toward life. But how can this work unfold when the body is not there? When there is no place to go? When there is no moment to gather? When time itself seems suspended? Winnicott spoke of the importance of transitional objects and gestures that allow the child — and the adult — to symbolize what is missing. The funeral ritual is one of these objects. It creates a passage. It transforms death into a psychic event. It allows one to say, “It happened.” It allows one to begin thinking what, without this, remains unthinkable. When the body is donated to science, this passage is interrupted. The parent’s gesture, often generous, sometimes militant, can be experienced by the children as a kind of dispossession. Not because they oppose the donation, but because they no longer have access to what, for them, would have allowed the separation to begin. Dolto reminded us that the body of the deceased is not only a biological body: it is a symbolic support, a last link, a final message. In some cases, the donation of the body leaves the relatives in a form of white mourning, as Racamier described it. A mourning without an object. A mourning without a scene. A mourning without proof. A mourning that cannot be spoken or represented. A mourning that remains suspended, like a book left open with its last pages missing. Clinical psychology and psychoanalysis can accompany these rare but deeply painful situations. They help restore meaning where reality has been too abrupt. They help rebuild an inner ritual when the outer ritual could not take place. They create a space where words can partially replace what could not be lived. For adult children, it is often a work of reappropriation. Reappropriation of the parent’s gesture, which can be understood as an act of transmission, an act of trust in science, an act of generosity. Reappropriation of their own pain, which can finally be recognized, named, heard. Reappropriation of the bond, which can be rebuilt differently, without a body but not without memory. Kaës wrote that rituals are not merely traditions: they are collective psychic devices that transform the unbearable into something thinkable. When they are missing, new ones must be invented. A letter written to the deceased. A walk. A piece of music. A chosen object. A symbolic place. A date. A gesture. Something that allows one to say: “I let you go, but I keep you with me in another way.” For those who are considering donating their body to science, it is possible to help their loved ones by informing them of their intention. By explaining what this gesture means to them. By giving them the possibility to imagine an alternative ritual. By telling them that they will have the right to create a moment, a place, a word. By giving them permission to say goodbye even without a body. By offering, before leaving, a space in which the symbolic can begin to take shape. The donation of the body to science is a noble gesture. But it sometimes leaves those who remain with an enigma. An enigma that psychoanalysis can help unfold. An enigma that requires time, gentleness, creativity. An enigma that, one day, can become a story. And in that story, the deceased finds a place again. A living place. A symbolic place. A place that finally allows those who remain to continue living. REFERENCES  Dolto, F. (1985). When the Child Appears. Paris: Gallimard. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. In Metapsychology. Paris: Gallimard. Kaës, R. (2009). Unconscious Alliances. Paris: Dunod. Lebovici, S. (1983). The Infant, the Mother and the Psychoanalyst. Paris: Bayard. Racamier, P.-C. (1992). The Genius of Origins. Paris: Payot. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.

When Checking Becomes Surviving: The Invisible Anxiety Behind Obsessive Rituals

There are patients who come to therapy in a state of profound exhaustion, caught in rituals that have taken hold of their lives. They speak of a fatigue that begins the moment they wake up, of a worry that settles in before the day has even started. They say, “I know it’s irrational, but I can’t stop.” And behind that sentence lie months, sometimes years, of silent struggle. Some check the door several times before leaving home. Others wash their hands until the skin becomes irritated. Still others retrace their steps to make sure the gas is off, the car is locked, that nothing terrible is about to happen. These are not trivial gestures. They are desperate attempts to keep at bay a diffuse fear, a fear without an object, a fear of catastrophe that has no name. A fear that is not real, yet feels as if it were. One patient told me she washed her hands ten times before preparing her children’s meals. She said, “I know my hands are clean, but I’m afraid of giving them something.” That “something” had no shape, no name. It was a floating anxiety, a sense of threat that moved from one object to another. She was not truly afraid of germs. She was afraid of not being a protective enough mother, of letting an invisible danger slip through, of not being equal to what life demanded of her. Washing became a ritual to soothe an old guilt, an overwhelming responsibility, an anxious form of love. Another patient would systematically return to check the door of his apartment. He said, “I know it’s locked, but I’m afraid something will happen if I don’t check.” That “something” had no form either. It was a diffuse worry, a background anxiety looking for a place to land. The door became that place — a scene where anxiety could play itself out without flooding everything else. What often strikes me is the solitude in which these patients live their rituals. They know it makes no sense. They know the door is locked, the faucet is off, the lights are out. They know it intellectually, but their body does not know it. Their body demands another gesture, another verification, another impossible certainty. And it is this impossibility that exhausts them. Clinically, these symptoms rarely appear by chance. They emerge at moments when life shifts: a birth, a loss, a separation, a professional change, a new responsibility. Anthropologists like Mary Douglas have shown how human societies use rituals to contain uncertainty. Obsessive patients create their own rituals to contain an anxiety that overflows. It is not the door they check, nor the hands they wash, but their own capacity to remain standing in a world that feels unstable. Psychoanalysis does not approach these rituals as errors to correct. It listens to them as singular responses to singular histories. Freud (1907/1984) showed that the obsessive subject tries to master a thought or desire they deem dangerous. Winnicott (1965) emphasized the importance of a reliable environment that allows the subject to relinquish omnipotence. Bion (1962), in a more international perspective, described the need to transform raw anxiety into thought. Other traditions, such as the Palo Alto school or the transcultural work of Kleinman (1988), highlight how the body, culture, and social representations shape these rituals. What matters is never to reduce the patient to their symptom. The ritual is only one fragment of their story. One must cross this gesture with everything that surrounds it: losses, responsibilities, identifications, fears, desires, recent or ancient events that have weakened their capacity to contain anxiety otherwise. The symptom is not an enemy to eliminate but a language to decipher. In some cases, the ritual softens when the patient discovers what they were truly trying to check: not the door, not the cleanliness of their hands, but their own solidity. Their capacity to tolerate uncertainty. To accept that not everything can be controlled. To recognize that vulnerability is not a fault. And sometimes, through this patient work, the door stops being a place of threat. The hands stop being a potential danger. The gesture loosens. The body breathes differently. The person discovers they can leave home without returning, cook without washing their hands ten times, walk away from a closed door without needing to touch it again. When that day comes, it is not a victory over the symptom. It is a meeting with oneself. A meeting that depends on the patient’s history, on what they carry, on what they have lived, on what they can symbolize. Nothing is universal. Nothing is mechanical. Everything is singular. And perhaps this is what analytic work ultimately allows: not checking, but self-checking. Not controlling, but understanding. Not reassuring, but transforming. A way of giving the world back some of its fluidity, and the subject some of their freedom. References  Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann. Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger. London: Routledge. Freud, S. (1907/1984). Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva. New York: Moffat, Yard. Kleinman, A. (1988). Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience. New York: Free Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press.

Marie Nussbaum
01 Nov, 2025
- Couple

Couple Therapy: Between Love, Attachment, and Repair

Couple therapy is not about "saving" a relationship at all costs, but about offering a space where partners can explore what is unfolding between them: wounds, expectations, repetitions, silences. It allows for the articulation of what often operates beneath the surface — unspoken loyalties, fears of abandonment, value conflicts, or diverging desires. International figures and clinical approaches In New York, psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik, known for her role in the documentary series Couples Therapy on Showtime, embodies an approach that is both rigorous and deeply human. She shows that conflict is not failure, but an entry point into deeper understanding of self and other. Her work highlights how the past shapes the present in love: trauma, family legacies, cultural identities. Esther Perel explores the paradoxes of desire and intimacy in couples. In Mating in Captivity, she shows how couples often struggle between safety and freedom, fusion and autonomy. She insists that "the couple is not a fixed entity, but a living space, crossed by opposing forces." French perspectives: love and attachment Boris Cyrulnik clearly distinguishes love — often sudden and linked to infatuation — from attachment, which is woven over time. "Love activates the reward system: dopamine, serotonin, endorphins. Attachment relies on the limbic system, the one of memory and safety." Serge Tisseron shows how couples can become trapped in fixed representations of each other or in unexamined projections. For Tisseron, couple therapy is a space to deconstruct implicit scripts, update unrealistic expectations, and reinvent the bond. Clinical situations and transformations Eddi and Jade come to therapy after ten years together. They say they no longer know how to communicate, feel exhausted, and have not connected since the birth of their baby. Beneath the reproaches and silences lie issues of recognition, role distribution, and loneliness in parenthood. Fanny and Jérôme arrive with a quiet tension: they don't fight, but they no longer really talk. They live side by side in a form of emotional politeness. Therapy allows them to explore what has become frozen: unspoken expectations, old wounds, silent renunciations. Jean and Marie come to sessions after a violent crisis. But behind the shouting lies fear of losing the other, separation anxiety, confusion between love and control. Therapy offers them a place to differentiate emotions, to think through issues of power, dependency, and desire. Ania and Igor, recently married, cannot agree on buying an apartment or having a child. This initial complaint reveals deeper divergences: relationship to money, career, parental models, projections about the future. Space of transformation and truth Couple therapy promises neither reconciliation nor separation. It is not the therapist's role to decide the outcome. But it offers a space of truth, kindness, listening, transformation, and sometimes repair. It allows movement from "I love you" to "I see you," from "you don't understand me" to "here's what I feel." It invites thinking together, dreaming together, or separating with dignity.

The Louvre Theft: A Silent Address

Sometimes an external event, almost unreal, sheds light on our most intimate questions. This autumn, the announcement of a jewel theft at the Louvre rippled through the public space like a bright wave: the French crown, its stones, its brilliance, gone like a bird we believed too heavy to fly. People were moved, amused, incredulous. It was as if a star had been removed from the sky: everyone thought it immutable, and suddenly it was no longer there. Such events remind us that theft is never a simple act. It touches value, lack, debt, filiation — the very fabric of what constitutes us. It speaks of the one who takes, but also of the one from whom something is taken. Theft can take multiple forms. There are trivial, compulsive thefts where the object has no importance: a pen, a shawl, a lighter. In kleptomania, the object is merely a pretext, a fleeting relief of inner tension — what Winnicott might have described as a desperate attempt to restore a sense of continuity of being. At the opposite end, grandiose thefts target symbols: diamonds, crowns, works of art. As if the coveted object carried a promise of narcissistic repair, a way to rise to the height of a lost ideal. Stealing a symbol is sometimes an attempt to appropriate an inner power that feels missing. Racamier would have seen in it a struggle against the “geniuses of origins” haunting certain subjects. There are also everyday micro-transgressions: skipping a metro fare, cutting in line, cheating on a subscription. What matters is not the money saved but the feeling of escaping a constraint perceived as arbitrary. Large-scale frauds — Madoff being the archetype — belong to another register: a megalomaniac staging. Green would have called it an extreme form of the “work of the negative”: destroying links, erasing debts, constituting oneself as absolute origin. And then there are survival thefts: stealing to eat, to make it to the end of the month. Here, the act is not a challenge to the law but an attempt to preserve life. Dolto would say the subject seeks to maintain minimal narcissistic integrity. Looting during riots or natural disasters — such as after Hurricane Katrina — belongs to yet another dynamic: group-based, archaic. The crowd becomes a single organism driven by survival, vengeance, or symbolic reappropriation. Contrary to common belief, a child’s theft is not a miniature version of adult theft. It does not predict delinquency or pathology. It is often a language — a gesture speaking where words are still too fragile. Between four and seven, stealing can be a way of exploring boundaries: testing the line between “mine” and “not mine.” Around seven or eight, theft may seek attention. A little girl who takes a pen from her teacher is not seeking the object; she is seeking the teacher. Later, theft may repair a narcissistic wound. A ten-year-old boy who steals Pokémon cards from a classmate is not seeking transgression; he is seeking to feel “like the others.” In clinical practice, some children quietly take an object from the therapy room. Winnicott would have spoken of a transitional object — a bridge between two worlds. We often forget the other side of theft: the one who is stolen from. Being stolen from is experiencing a sudden lack, an intrusion, a breach in psychic continuity. I think of Maya, a patient whose father’s watch and two rings were stolen days after his death. The objects represented a link, a memory, a filiation. The theft reopened an older wound: the wound of losing again. Whether spectacular like a jewel or discreet like a pen, theft always raises a question: what is this gesture trying to say, and to whom. Behind every stolen object lies a story, a lack, a desire, an address. In the end, theft speaks of the fragility of bonds, of the circulation of objects and affects, of what is transmitted and what is lost. Perhaps this is the silent lesson of the vanished crown: objects shine, but it is the stories they carry that illuminate us. References  Dolto, F. (1985). Lorsque l’enfant paraît. Gallimard. Green, A. (1993). Le travail du négatif. Minuit. Racamier, P.-C. (1992). Le génie des origines. Payot. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. Tavistock Publications.

When the Night Looks Back at Us: What Serial Killers Reveal About Our Imaginary

There is something unsettling and profoundly human in our fascination with serial killers. We observe them through documentaries, series, and podcasts, as if trying to understand what, in them, has tipped over. As if, by approaching the extreme, we were attempting to grasp our own shadows more clearly. It is not raw violence that draws us in, but the enigma. The enigma of a subject who crosses a boundary we will never cross, yet whose transgression questions us despite ourselves. Freud reminded us that human beings carry within them aggressive impulses they prefer not to acknowledge. The figure of the serial killer, in its radicality, becomes a distorted mirror: it allows us to look at human violence without being swallowed by it. Lacan wrote that acting out emerges where speech fails, where the subject can no longer find an address for their suffering. In this perspective, the serial killer is not a monster but a subject whose symbolic thread has long since broken. In crime narratives, what fascinates us is not the act itself but the repetition. Repetition as a desperate attempt to master an anxiety, to seal a psychic breach, to replay an inner scene that refuses to fade. De Clérambault, at Sainte‑Anne Hospital, described with almost surgical precision these mechanisms of mental automatism, these inner compulsions that can drive a subject to act under the pressure of a psychic necessity that exceeds them. He showed that behind horror lies a logic, an internal coherence, an economy of delirium. During my own work contributing to psychiatric assessments at the Psychiatric Infirmary of the Paris Police Prefecture (Infirmerie Psychiatrique de la Préfecture de Police) within Sainte‑Anne Hospital, I encountered acts that arrived raw, unfiltered, sometimes terrifying. And yet, even there, something was trying to speak. Forensic psychiatric expertise does not aim to excuse. It aims to understand. To situate the act within a trajectory, a structure, a fracture. Bénézech, in his work on forensic psychiatry, emphasized that expertise is neither defense nor accusation, but perspective. It allows us to distinguish psychotic violence from perverse violence, mental disorganization from structured intentionality. In certain trials, this distinction has been decisive. It has revealed that a subject, at the time of the act, no longer had access to reality, or that they acted under the grip of a delusion that held them captive. Where the press speaks of monsters, expertise speaks of structure, delirium, fragmentation, desubjectivation. What fascinates us in serial killers is not cruelty. It is the attempt to understand what, in another, has broken. It is the possibility of approaching the unthinkable without losing ourselves in it. It is the promise—perhaps illusory—that the enigma can be solved. That chaos can be ordered. That meaning can be found. In reality, meaning is never given. It is built. It is searched for. It is worked through. The expert does not deliver an absolute truth. They offer a reading, a hypothesis, a perspective. They attempt to restore to the subject a part of their humanity, even where the act seems to have erased it. Perhaps we are drawn to stories of serial killers because they offer a bearable version of this work. A version where the investigation progresses, where clues align, where truth can be grasped. A version where we can close the book or turn off the screen believing that order has been restored. Life is never so simple. But that is precisely why clinical work exists: to welcome what cannot be resolved, to hear what cannot be said, to illuminate what remains obscure. To remind us that behind every act, even the most unthinkable, there is a subject, a history, a wound, a fracture. And perhaps that is what draws us so deeply to these narratives: the possibility of looking at the night without being consumed by it. The possibility of understanding, just a little more, what in each of us still seeks a form of light. REFERENCES  Bénézech, M. (2004). Legal Psychiatry and Criminology. Paris: Masson. De Clérambault, G.-G. (1942). Psychiatric Works. Paris: PUF. Freud, S. (1916/2010). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Lacan, J. (1955/2013). The Seminar, Book III: The Psychoses. New York: Norton. Lacan, J. (1966). Écrits. London: Routledge. Racamier, P.-C. (1992). The Genius of Origins. Paris: Payot. Yalom, I. D. (1989). Love’s Executioner. New York: Basic Books.

Inner Space: Mental Health and Subjectivity in Orbit

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, men and women left Earth to explore the edges of the cosmos. But in the silence of the capsules, where outer space meets inner emptiness, another journey begins: that of the psyche in weightlessness. Since 2023, I have been conducting research on the psychological effects of extreme confined environments, in collaboration with Université Paris Cité. This emerging clinical field draws on psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. Extreme environments and confined isolation This field concerns astronauts, but also submariners, solo sailors, and researchers isolated in polar stations — such as those at Dome C in Antarctica, where a single habitation shelters teams for several months in near-permanent darkness. These situations share a common structure: isolation, close quarters, disruption of sensory and social reference points, and the need to maintain function within a constrained setting. Research conducted by NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency shows that prolonged orbital flights carry increased risks of psychological disorders: anxiety, depression, irritability, sleep disturbances, interpersonal tensions. A comparative study suggests that orbital missions — particularly aboard the International Space Station — generate more psychological complications than stays on lunar or planetary bases, where gravitational and environmental reference points are partially restored. Microgravity and floating identity Microgravity affects the body, but also the sense of identity. The floating subject, deprived of verticality, experiences altered sensory and symbolic reference points. The 90-minute day/night cycle aboard the International Space Station disrupts circadian rhythms, impacting mood and concentration. Living with three or four people for two years aboard a Mars-bound shuttle requires stable relational dynamics, emotional regulation, conflict negotiation, and cohesion without fusion. Selecting profiles is not enough: it's their arrangement, compatibility, and relational plasticity that matter. Remote connection and terrestrial families On a Martian mission, the communication delay between Earth and the shuttle is estimated at 25 minutes. Such temporal lag makes emotional exchanges difficult, even frustrating. Studies in space psychology show that this type of communication alters the sense of presence, increases loneliness, and can affect emotional stability. Psychoanalytic contributions and symbolic anchoring Psychoanalysis offers valuable tools. It invites us to consider space as a mirror of inner space: what we project into the stars is also what we flee or seek within ourselves. By symbolic anchor, I mean the psychic function that Earth plays as a stable reference point — an imaginal matrix, a place of origin and return. In orbit, this anchor dissolves. This loss can provoke deep disorientation, an altered sense of existence, even an identity crisis. Clinical analogy: birth and separation A clinical analogy can be made with the infant's passage from intrauterine life to birth. At birth, the reference disappears abruptly — the infant must breathe, regulate temperature, seek the breast, adjust to a world that no longer contains them in a fused way. Similarly, the astronaut in orbit loses their "terrestrial placenta." They must reinvent forms of psychic continuity in an environment that no longer naturally contains them. How to maintain an inner Earth when the body floats, when time dilates, when connection diffracts? Cultural metaphors and psychic care In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the character of Deanna Troi, counselor aboard the Enterprise, embodies this psychic function within the crew. In the episode "The Loss," she suddenly loses her empathic abilities — a metaphor for burnout, loss of meaning, and the need to redefine oneself beyond function. These fictional figures reflect a collective intuition that space exploration cannot proceed without psychic care. Outer space becomes the stage for inner emptiness — and sometimes, its traversal.

Sexual Addiction: Between Pleasure, Suffering, and the Quest for Connection

Sexual addiction, far from being a mere excess of desire, challenges the modalities of pleasure, the relationship to others, and the body. It can be a source of enjoyment, but becomes symptomatic when it imposes itself as the sole mode of psychic regulation or expression — at the cost of suffering, isolation, and compulsive repetition. Contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives Contemporary psychoanalytic literature, including the work of Vincent Estellon, Joyce McDougall, Patrick Carnes, Aviel Goodman, Shere Hite, Martin Kafka, and Laurent Karila, explores the archaic roots of these behaviors. Estellon describes a "defensive sexualization": a way to ward off the terror of loving and being loved by substituting affective connection with repetitive, often affectless sexual scenes. Clinical cases and repetitions Corentin cycles through female partners with one obsession: making them climax. Yet as soon as emotional depth threatens to emerge, he vanishes. He is less interested in the other than in the effect he produces. He experiences himself as disposable, seeking proof of his worth through repetition, never allowing himself to be touched. The orgasm of the other becomes a substitute for love — a fleeting validation of existence, devoid of attachment. Tony grew up with an impotent, absent father, unable to embody a figure of transmission. His compulsive sexuality, marked by a drive for performance, seems to respond to a castration anxiety. He seeks to prove his masculinity, but no act suffices to fill the void left by paternal failure. Codified practices and ritualizations Ari and Jean frequent only swingers' clubs. For Ari and Jean, swinging has become ritualized — a repeated scene where the conjugal bond is tested. Beneath the intensity lies a difficulty in encountering each other outside performance. Garance and Éluard, married for thirty years, now connect only through the thrill of upcoming sexual freedom. One partner begins to suffer, no longer recognizing themselves in the practice. The balance falters — not because of the practice itself, but due to a loss of meaning, absence of dialogue, and growing solitude within the bond. Omnipotence and dispossession Anna, a brilliant academic, consults for unexplained fatigue. She finds relief in BDSM practices — a form of dispossession. Yet her submission seems to replay an ambivalence: the social and intellectual power she cannot inhabit, delegated to the other in intimacy. Karim spends exorbitant amounts on sex work. He can no longer form romantic bonds. "At least there, I know what I'm worth," he says. Payment becomes a ritual of control — a shield against rejection and a way to fix the relationship in a reassuring asymmetry. Distinguishing pleasure from symptom These forms of pleasure are not inherently pathological. They may express singular desire, self-exploration, or consensual play. But when they become the sole mode of connection, accompanied by suffering, isolation, shame, or chronic dissatisfaction, they signal a psychic conflict worth exploring. As McDougall notes, such patients often experienced early intrusion or abandonment, constructing powerful defenses to survive annihilation anxiety. ReferencesCarnes, P. (2001). Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction. Hazelden Publishing. Estellon, V. (2012). Les racines archaïques des addictions sexuelles. Société Psychanalytique de Paris. Kafka, M. P. (2010). Hypersexual disorder: A proposed diagnosis for DSM-V. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(2), 377–400. McDougall, J. (1982). Theatres of the Body. Free Association Books. Goodman, A. (1993). Diagnosis and treatment of sexual addiction. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 19(3), 225–251.