De l'état dépressif à l'état de triomphe du moi

Although melancholy has been the focus of a large number of studies, this has not been the case for mania and even less for the passage from melancholy to mania, more particularly the passage from a depressive state to a self-triumphant state, the latter expression being used by Freud to characterize states of self-induced excitement or elation. On the basis of the specific pathological model of the passage from melancholy to mania, the present study has therefore attempted to determine the underlying metapsychological processes for what are commonly termed cyclic disorders or changes of mood, the dynamics of which is connected with the types of interaction between the various elements within the psychic system. The theoretical approach that has been adopted is essentially psychoanalytical, and in parallel to Freud’s analysis of this state, we are already able to delineate the context in which cyclic disorders occur: it consists of an “interior theatre”, and on its stage the self in its relation to the ideal self which continues to play the same role as it had previously assumed in its relation to the exterior object, i.e. before it had incorporated the exterior object and allowed it to take its place. The self thus finds itself in the position of the object confronted with its ideal self, and the omnipotence of the latter henceforth determines the course of their relations.Melancholy and mania are thus related to the same “complex” and their metapsychological difference lies in the fate of the introjected object: if in the case of melancholy the object has taken over the role assumed by the self, what has become of the self in the manic state? In the present study, the hypothesis proposed is that of committing an intrapsychic act, an indefinitely perpetrated crime, i.e. the act of murdering the object constructed on the basis of a working model of mourning which requires that the mourner “strikes a fatal blow” for a second time in order to actively confirm the subject’s own satisfaction at remaining alive. However, the state of manic exhaltation, just like the state of melancholic depression, is linked to the conflict between the self and its ideal self and to the law of an alter ego that is always as cruel toward a mythical lost object which remains a cause of irrepressible nostalgia.