Abstract:
Recent decades saw the emergence of a debate regarding the halt in research on mania in psychoanalysis. This article examines two explanatory hypotheses for this gap based on nosography: the first concerns the broad endorsement of manic-depressive psychosis as a category, whereas the second refers to the indistinct adoption of divergent categories by psychoanalysts. Contrary to these interpretations, but within the same framework, we claim that the most decisive factor for such stagnation lies in the conceptions of mania assumed by psychoanalysis. If, on the one hand, the meaning attributed to the invariably secondary position of mania alongside melancholia as a defense contributed to the metapsychological delimitation of the clinical picture, on the other, it led to the exaggerated restriction of its psychopathology and the corresponding decrease in research on these cases.
Keywords:
mania; psychoanalysis; psychopathology; nosography