Expressive forms of psychotic language // DOI: 10.18226/21784612.v22.n2.01

Abstract

This study comes from a series of research carried out in some Italian Psychiatric Hospitals. Specifically, the investigation concerns emotional, cognitive and linguistic aspects of psychotic forms of expression. So, we will discuss psychotic expressive language by analysis of an exemplary case report: i.e. commenting on the iconographic and textual productions by a subject in several decades of psychopathological experiences (hundreds of sketches, drawings and paintings, and numerous pages of delusional texts).

In this paper, we examine some psychotic expressive codes, and the emotional mode characterizing them. These psychotic expressive codes are linguistic, communicative, referential and they are of importance for artistic creativity. But we especially try to highlight the role of emotional, liberating, cathartic and compensatory functions that the “language of madness” enables patients to express. More in general, we try to regard their specific relational mode, and their being or being-at-world.

Keywords: Psychotic languages. Fantastic or imagination delusion. Artistic creativity. Emotive expressive forms.