ÊTRE ET VIE RÉTRÉCIS : DU SYNDROME D’ALCESTE À LA PSYCHOSE BLANCHE DANS RÉTRÉCISSEMENT DE FRÉDÉRIC SCHIFFTER
Narrowing Being and Life: From Alceste's Syndrome to White Psychosis in Rétrécissement by Frédéric Schiffter

Summary/Abstract: This article examines Frédéric Schiffter’s novel, Rétrécissement, which highlights the story of Baudouin Villard, a high school philosophy teacher and author of unread essays, who spirals into a depressive fall bordering on white psychosis, ultimately leading to his death. The psychiatrist he consults diagnoses him with Alceste syndrome, which can trigger psychotic episodes, but fails to cure him. Symptoms such as weight loss, loss of interest, disorientation, depression, isolation, aphasia, and others, triggered by a lack of love, friendship, and empathy worsen and accumulate. The story is rooted in our current societies, where overconsumption of all kinds takes precedence over genuine social life, the personal sphere, and even the body, all of which shrink until annihilation. By leveraging Jacques Lacan’s work on the Borromean knot of the psyche, the 'sinthome’, and its rupture, as well as Jean-Luc Donnet’s and André Green’s studies on white psychosis, this article aims to show that the novel serves as an allegory of the danger of alienation faced by individuals in the hypermodern world, where humble or ordinary personalities have no place and no choice but to fall into a non-violent madness before disappearing.

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