Table Of ContentTHE DELUSIONAL PERSON
THE DELUSIONAL PERSON
Bodily Feelings in Psychosis
Salomon Resnik
Translated by
David Alcorn
Foreword by
R. Horacio Etchegoyen
K A R N A C
LONDON NEW YORK
First published in 2001 by
H. Karnac (Books) Ltd,
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
A subsidiary of Other Press LLC, New York
Copyright © 2001 Salomon Resnik
The rights of Salomon Resnik to be identified as the author of this work have
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CLP. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 85575 262 7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Edited, designed, and produced by Communication Crafts
www.karnacbooks.com
Printed and bound by Biddies Short Run Books, King's Lynn
CONTENTS
FOREWORD by R. Horacio Etchegoyen
Introductory self-reflections
CHAPTER ONE
Personalization
CHAPTER TWO
Cotard's syndrome and depersonalization
CHAPTER THREE
An attack of catatonic negativism
CHAPTER FOUR
Language and communication
CHAPTER FIVE
Body language and verbalization:
the analysis of an acute psychotic crisis
V i C O N T E N T S
CHAPTER SIX
Countertransference 163
CHAPTER SEVEN
The experience of space in the analytic situation 179
CHAPTER EIGHT
A profile of the schizophrenic mind 197
Postscriptum 23
REFERENCES 231
INDEX 239
FOREWORD
R. Horacio Etchegoyen
alomon Resnik is undoubtedly one of the most original and
productive psychoanalysts of our time. His philosophical,
Sliterary, and artistic background is impressive, and he has a
deep understanding of psychoanalytic theories, not only because
he is so well read, but also—and perhaps mainly—because of his
skill, his considerable presence, and his originality.
Resnik was born in Buenos Aires and trained in Argentina. An
associate member of the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association in
1955, he became a full member in 1957. He underwent training
analyses with Luis Rascovsky and Marie Langer and was super
vised by Heinrich Racker; he then had further analysis with Luisa
G. de Alvarez de Toledo. He was one of Enrique J. Pichon-Riviere's
first pupils, and he attended seminars by Marie Langer, Heinrich
Racker, Celes Ernesto Carcamo, Arminda Aberastury, and other
pioneering figures of the time.
Among his colleagues were Leon Grinberg, David Liberman,
Raul Usandivaras, Willy and Madeleine Baranger, and Joel Zac,
with whom he was able to establish a productive and on-going
dialogue.
vii
V i i i F O R E W O R D
I met Resnik for the first time in Enrique Pichon-Riviere's
famous psychoanalytically orientated psychiatric clinic, towards
the end of the 1940s. Since then, we have been close friends.
In Argentina at that time, Resnik was doing pioneer work with
psychotic children, and this enabled him to begin practising analy
sis with adult psychotic patients. This experience proved of par
ticular value in his writings, especially for his paper on Cotard's
syndrome (published here as chapter two).
In order to broaden his experience of life and complete his
training, he travelled to Europe in 1957. He spent one year in Paris,
attending lecture courses by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude
Levy-Strauss, and Roger Bastide. At the same time, he was work
ing with Dr Pierre Daumezon, one of the most brilliant French
psychiatrists of the day, who gave him the opportunity to com
plete his training in classic psychiatry, especially in semiotics. Dr
Daumezon put him in touch with the eminent English psychiatrist
Morris Carstairs, who, on a visit to Paris, found Resnik's work
with chronic schizophrenics particularly interesting. Through Dr
Carstairs, in 1958 he was appointed consultant psychiatrist in the
Netherne Hospital, Coulsdon, Surrey; this meant a move to Eng
land, where he was put in charge of a therapeutic community of
young psychotic patients.
Resnik has always sought to develop his understanding of early
object relationships as delineated in the work of Melanie Klein.
Klein invited Resnik to attend her seminars and recommended him
to Herbert Rosenfeld for further analysis, which in the event lasted
for more than thirteen years. Resnik remained in weekly contact
with Klein until her death in 1960. He became a guest member of
the British Institute of Psycho-Analysis, where he attended semi
nars and had supervision with W. R. Bion, Hanna Segal, and
Esther Bick. According to Salomon Resnik, Bion stimulated him
into developing his own original style and way of thinking. An
other important influence was D. W. Winnicott, whose seminars
Resnik also attended before becoming a close friend.
After twelve years in London, he decided in 1971 to return to
Paris, attracted as he was by the humanistic culture and way of life
there and by the echoes these had with his Latin American roots.
Today Resnik is an international psychoanalyst, whose name is
known throughout Europe, particularly for the way he has influ
F O R E W O R D JX
enced a whole generation of psychiatrists in France and Italy. He
has written books and papers in French, Italian, English, and Span
ish. The Delusional Person is a book that brings together some of his
major original writings. It was first published in French, then in
Italian and in Spanish; now it can be read by English-speaking
psychoanalysts. Two of his books, The Theatre of the Dream and
Mental Space, have already appeared in English, the first published
by Routledge and Tavistock (in their series The New Library of
Psychoanalysis), the second by Karnac Books.
The title of this book, The Delusional Person, is a reference to the
particular concerns of the author as to the ethical aspects of the
transference situation: whatever the depth of regression in any
given patient, we are always dealing with a person—from person to
person. Winnicott's concept of personalization, an important part
of his "primitive emotional development", was also a major influ
ence on Resnik's approach and way of thinking. Other important
influences on Resnik have come from Klein and some of her pu
pils, together with Paid Federn, E. Minkowski, and Paul Schilder.
According to Resnik, the idea of the person implies unity, inte
gration, and identity. These are aspects that the psychotic loses in
part (but never wholly). Resnik emphasizes the fact that the psy
chotic cannot accept the boundaries of his own body, since he
cannot tolerate the limitations of daily existence and the concomi
tant idea of finite death.* The psychotic often has to leave his body
behind, much as seafarers have to abandon a ship about to sink
(the simile is borrowed from Jaspers). In his book The Psychotic
Experience, published in Italian, French, and Spanish, Resnik states
that the psychotic experiences a kind of metempsychosis: thoughts
and feelings abandon his body to live a wandering, nomadic exist
ence, forever searching for a place to "be". Resnik recently pub
lished in French a paper entitled "Wild Thoughts in Search of
Shelter", inspired to some extent by Bion's ideas.
One of the most original chapters in this book concerns the
experience of space in the analytic setting (chapter seven). For
Resnik, space in the psychotic tends to multiply. In the same way,
emigrating or wandering thoughts leave their private space within
*For clarity of exposition, masculine pronouns have been used throughout
i n general discussions.
