Douleur chronique : une maladie du deuil ?

Scientific literature underlines the impact of traumatic life events and being confronted with stressful situations in chronic pain syndrome settling in. The prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) amongst patients suffering from chronic pain shows the existence of a bi-directional relationship and a mutual maintenance between these two entities. If, in a significant proportion, traumatic events and emotional shocks recur in the antecedents of the patient in pain, we hereby wish, to question the links between chronic pain and the particular life event that is mourning from a psychodynamic point of view. We offer to question the somatic vulnerability induced by loss and the way in which pain invades the weakened body and settles there. How could the intrapsychic process following on from experiencing loss not lead to the development of mourning but also change when it comes to chronic pain syndrome surfacing? From three clinical situations, the relationships between pain chronicisation, the omission of the mourning process and the clinical relevance of the painful crypt concept will be examined. Chronic pain will then be used as the index for the persistence of the link to the lost object, which a separating process was not able to elaborate.