P02-269 - The Logical Affirmation of Non Being as Clear Indication of Psychosis Balvet's Syndrome

Abstract

When Dr Leuret published his “Psychological fragments on madness” in 1834 he went to great lengths to describe a woman who claimed to be Other than herself.

She uses the third person (s) and describes a sort of break between what she sees and experiences as two lives lived by two persons ; persons in no way connected.

The paper then moves to Dr Klein, a psychotic psychiatrist who in 1937 published his thesis on the logical impossibility of being a person.

The last case quoted is that of a great British poet who doubted the nature of the unified I.

The paper concludes by opposing Balvet's syndrome to the Ganser syndrome in which we find suspension of identity but not dissolution of identity.