Laughter and psychosis

Résumé 0

Psychotic laughter is to be taken seriously. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Miss Pascal, in her work on early-onset dementia, stressed that studying it could be an aid for diagnosis. Few studies, however, have been devoted to it. This article approaches the clinical characteristics of psychotic laughter through a review of the literature. From these first studies, and on the basis of these clinical considerations, we propose to approach laughter in psychosis—in its “unmotivated” form in particular—from the perspective of psychoanalytic theory. We will approach the “bursts” of psychotic laughter as bursts of reality out of symbolism, out of meaning, out of connection to the Other. We will see that their abruptness, their suddenness, may be related to “constraint” (Kraepelin), and that their necessity to “burst out” can be understood from the perspective of the attempt to extract the object (a) (Lacan). Finally, we will consider psychotic laughter in its relation to the body, to affect, to the unconscious, and to the “voice” as a pulsating object.