[Space and psychopathology. From semiology to a therapeutic framework]

Space is a fundamental aspect of the human being, but it is often neglected in clinical psychology. A clinical examination has to take into account the different dimensions of space, which is acted, organized, inhabited, experienced, represented and imagined. A clinical examination also consists in different stages: the person who is talking about his spatial organisation is looked at, listened to and his spatial representations are studied. Failures in the spatial organisation have consequences on the treatment course, and especially on the way the therapeutic environment can be experienced and accepted. Adjustments could be foreseen according to the clinical diagnostical study. The environment is the trustee of archaic glischocaric anguishes, but the patient keeps his own representation of his environment. The study of spatial marks implies looking for the fundamental marks of the human being as well as the existence of a mystical space that has to be differenciated from a pathological space.