François Pommier : Aids and the fantasy of immortality

The defence strategies of the Aids pathologies towards finitude strongly recall those building themselves up during adolescence. An ego wounded and attacked by the unbinding forces and infantile ideals trying to disentangle themselves rest in the latter. The resurgence of the fantasy of immortality coming up again and unfolding itself during puberty enables the wiping out or the misappreciation of the wound. Through some extracts from the psychoanalytic cure of a patient suffering from Aids, we shall try to show how such a fantasy is liable to emerge and also how far the psychoanalyst, with reference to the idea of a forecast death may find himself blotted out from his position of neutrality and confronted to his own belief in immortality.