PubMed1979
In order to understand the problem of the relationship between woman and madness, it is important to take history into account. Mental illness consists in the difficulty to express one's sexual difference in a wide sense (economic, political, ideological, imaginary and symbolical), this is where history comes into consideration. Woman, relegated in the far recess of history, deprived of the possibility to express herself, is today searching for her true expression. As far as the man's confusion of ideas is concerned, because of his denial of woman, all he had left was to differentiate himself from himself and therefore creates symbolic social classes ; this thesis is not an idealistic one - it goes without saying that this symbolical evolution develops itself in interrelation with economic and material development of society. The masculine confusion of ideas (délire) is historical while the feminine one is hysterical. This view of mental illness has political and ideological consequences. The annihilation of the roots of mental illness will come about only through the elimination of social classes and the real liberation of woman. This does not mean the rejection of therapeutic work, revolutions never cured anybody, but the extension of the clinical world to politics, the breaking down of established practices and interdisciplinarity. In short term, we have to deal with individuals who feel in themselves the after effects of an aged social structure, therefore not strictly individual but collective behaviors. In the long term, only a profound social transformation can limit the number of victims of the situation. One day maybe every one will be able to express and achieve themselves in a fully realised communism. This text wanted to be a locus of information on the historical and political basis of mental illness and the interconnected role played by the feminine 'délire' (madness).