Analyse phénoménologique de la notion d'événement et ses implications pour la psychopathologie

If, contrary to most facts whose meaning is context dependant, an event is understood as having a meaning that is not context dependant, precisely because this event reshapes completely the context, one can understand that such an event may induce the collapse of all basis of interpretation, or in other words the collapse of the world as the horizon of intelligibility, as the horizon of possibilities from which can be constructed the meaning. One can also understand in which sense the world we deal with, when such an event occurs, is the world that arises with and through this event. This phenomenological understanding of the event sheds a new light on aspects of empirical research in psychopathology in which the event plays a central role. We will consider the case of “reaction pathologies”, as well as epidemiological research on life events in psychopathology. Finally, we will come back to the hypothesis, proposed by philosophers, of a loss of the ability in psychotic states to remain open to the event, and in general to the unforeseen..