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.