Expressions et mise en acte du désir de mort chez le sujet très âgé : enjeux psychiques et éthiques

At the crossroads of various symptoms specific to the field of geriatric psychopathology, the death wish can take on various masks misleading the clinician to diverse nosography entities and causing a therapeutic impasse for care teams. The authors question the emergence of a death desire in the elderly in a clinical context that allows them to identify different phases along the path of a seriously ill patient, from the refusal of any treatment to the patient's death. In the light of the Freudian-Lacanian theory, they identify different mechanisms at work in the course of this process, revealing the specificity of the death desire among subjects confronted with certain death. The question of “the help to die” will be finally convened by the Freudian-Lacanian analysis of this clinical accompaniment.