Les représentations du diable

The representations appear in all types of mythology in forms which come more or less from the devil or demons but with constant features.These mythic images are always linked with the limit of what can be symbolised in destruction.Consequently these representations or even delerium of being possessed can almost always be seen in moments of alternation between psychosis and perversion.If a pervert can sometimes have a behaviour which can be defined as «diabolic» in his impulsive hold on reality, the psychotic is not perverse, as he begins to symbolize this tendency by a conviction of possession or in a more structured way by the development of these representations.The exorcist ritual goes towards an active symbolization in which body, words and relationship with others resituate themselves.Psychoanalysis, which is sometimes compared to a sort of exorcism, does not have this dimension of action and suggestion. It is however confronted, often implicitly as any discipline in which the human being is questioning his suffering, with the notion of «evil» where the problems of «pathos» and the basis of an ethic strangely meet