Exceptional Experiences: Between the Neurosciences and Psychoanalysis

After a brief description of exceptional experience and clinical practice associated with these experiences, we will try to show how these experiences are important, notably as being at the meeting between psychoanalysis and neurosciences. From this point of view, three main lines will be developed. The first one deals with the links between recent work about non-pathologic hallucinations and more especially perceptive exceptional experiences. We will describe how these experiences can be considered as nevrotic and as the consequence of strong anxiety of separation. Then, we will propose some reflexions about altered states of consciousness and hypnotic states, by studying exceptional experiences as abductions. Finally, this article end by shedding light on these experiences with work about neuron mirrors and the notion of psychological permeability.