2024-01-02 15:59:12
Madame Flocon, aged 42, hospitalized following an acute bout of delirium, says she is pregnant with 24 babies. In this article, Alison Bardy, psychologist, offers a reading of the few meetings she conducted with this patient, attempting to explore the content of her delusion and to articulate her experience with analytical theory.
Psychologist, I met Madame Flocon during her stay in the psychiatric hospital. I will conduct five interviews with her spread over three weeks. Before being admitted to the unit where I work, she is, due to lack of space, hospitalized in another department, from where she runs away before returning very agitated. Consequence: several days in an isolation room! So I meet her when she is calmer.
During the daily transmission meeting, Madame Flocon, 42 years old, is presented as a “borderline condition” patient, followed for several years by a psychiatrist specializing in the management of this disorder but also for a former addiction to alcohol. Admitted to hospital for an acute delirium, her troubles began a few days earlier while she was celebrating her engagement. Faced with the violence and distress of his partner, his companion is forced to call the police and firefighters. Madame Flocon ransacked their apartment, broke the windows, threw furniture out of the windows. In her agitation, she hurts herself, accusing her friend of hitting her while she slept. She herself gave him several blows.
A few days earlier, Madame Flocon reported a serious stomach infection, requiring admission to intensive care. She thought she would die but didn’t say much about it. For our part, we have not been able to retrieve the hospitalization report. I tried to question Madame Flocon’s referring psychiatrist about the nature of her somatic problem but she was unable to give me more details. The unit was, like many sector units, understaffed both medically and nursing, and relied heavily on temporary workers to function, which sometimes makes monitoring difficult. A single somatician was present part-time for four units of around fifteen patients each. These kinds of difficulties were commonplace when I worked in this department. Apart from hiatuses like this, we had little time to devote, collectively, to clinical reflection. It was not uncommon for us to have blind spots that we didn’t even identify, and which prevented us from thinking about our care correctly.
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Alison Bardy, psychologist
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