Subjectivity, mathematical creation and the pathology of thought

Mathematics are probably as stated Cavaillès, a singular becoming. But like other sciences, their development is based on epistemological obstacles, and specifically crisis. Faced with the Russell’s paradox and the crisis of set theory, three great mathematicians, Russell, Hilbert and Brouwer have adopted different positions, respectively logicist, intuitionist and formalist. Imre Hermann in his book Parallelismes, has attempted a comparative analysis of their creative thinking approach with three psychopathological profiles, phobia, obsessive neurosis and schizophrenia. Beyond the interest of this descriptive study, extremely rich, both for psychoanalysis and for mathematics, his work raises more general questions. What about the subjective parentage of mathematic creations, and what methodology psychoanalysis could develop to treat that question? Conversely, does the history of mathematical progress fall of a certain mathematic “character” of psychoanalytic subjectivity? We intend to stand by these issues, through the review of the arguments put forward by Hermann in his article Mathematical Theory of sets.