Introduction

This introduction chapter presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. After the Second World War, several French psychoanalysts became interested in the psychoanalytic treatment of patients whose mental functioning could be described as psychotic. One of the most important of those analysts was without a doubt Francis Pasche. In the dialectic between psychic reality and external reality, Freud showed that access to reality depends on a drive-related movement in which reality is not simply accessible from the outset but is, in fact, an objective that has to be attained, the result of a conquest. Journal of the Centre for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, founded in 1980 by E. Kestemberg. That journal enabled those working in this field in France to develop a psychoanalytic approach to psychotic functioning, taking as their basis a certain number of concepts that research in this domain had highlighted: splitting of the ego, negation, erotogenic masochism, moral masochism, delusional solutions.