[Psychiatry and its spatiotemporal referentials]

In the course of its history, psychiatry has grown richer parallel to the development of its spatiotemporal system of the reference. Initially classical empirical psychiatry mainly conceived and represented mental disorder in a two dimensional space. Temporality seemed predominant due to the development of the pathology. Psychopathologic, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological currents have inserted it into a three dimensional space by clarifying its psychopathogenic progress connected with the environment. The merely descriptive attitude of the diagnostic criteria tends to place it back in the original two dimensional space. The systemal method views it in a pluri-dimensional space specific of any living system, permitty to understand its mobility and changes better. It results in the notion of a spatio-temporal field. The latter leads to new strategics of knowledge and contributes to a better integration of psychiatry into the world of contemporary scientific knowledge.