Les théories du complot, aujourd’hui très présentes dans l’espace public, sont très peu étudiées par la psychologie clinique — en partie par crainte d’une application abusive des catégories psychopathologiques. Nous questionnons ici la pertinence d’une approche clinique psychodynamique de ce phénomène.

Les implications et la portée heuristique de trois notions cliniques sont discutées : paranoïa, perversion et traumatisme.

Une conception psychodynamique questionne les théories du complot comme des constructions subjectives et collectives, en évitant le risque d’une qualification diagnostique des sujets qui y adhèrent, et d’une dichotomie entre normal et pathologique.

Cet article ébauche une clinique différentielle de ce phénomène très vaste et hétérogène du conspirationnisme, particulièrement nécessaire pour penser ses principales dimensions et des modalités de prévention.

Conspiracy theories appear today as a specific collective imaginary. Belief in conspiracy theories seems to have clearly increased during the last decades, partly due to their elaboration and diffusion via social media. A lot of empirical research about conspiracy theories are designed in social and cognitive psychology, but only a few studies adopt a clinical point of view. One reason is that such a clinical approach carries the risk of abusively applying some psychopathological notions to a wide range of the general population, and to a social – and not only individual – construct. This paper aims to promote a psychodynamic approach to conspiracy theories. We argue that this approach allows to studying them as subjective and collective constructs, leaving aside any attempt to make a diagnosis on people believing in conspiracy theories, and any dichotomy between the normal and the pathological.

We discuss three clinical ways to represent the psychological functions of conspiracy theories: paranoid ideation, perverse uses, and reaction to traumatic events. As a matter of fact, these clinical notions are often explicitly referred to, or implicitly implied, when psychological motives or functions of belief in conspiracy theories are discussed. We seek to point out the implications of these three clinical notions and their ability to shed light on conspiracy theories. This leads to discuss their relevance for a differential clinic of the belief in conspiracy theories, allowing to identify the various dimensions of conspiracy theories, and of their subjective uses and functions.

Through a psychodynamic understanding of clinical entities, conspiracy theories can be studied as both subjective and collective constructs. In this way, we argue that a psychodynamic approach can avoid the risk of a diagnostical and pathological use of clinical concepts stemming from a binary distribution between the normal and the pathological. It rather leads to question along a continuum the various dimensions of conspiracy theories and of the belief in their content.

The phenomenon of conspiracy theories seems to emerge from a wide range of heterogeneous and distinctive constructs, uses and attitudes. Belief in conspiracy theories can provide several kinds of psychological benefits, implying various subjective functions and psychic mechanisms. Moreover, in terms of psychological attitudes, we have to clearly distinguish different phenomena: some spontaneous and collective elaborations of conspiracy theories, belief in conspiracy theories, the process of their diffusion, and their political, social and psychological intentional uses. These heterogeneous dimensions raise the risk of undermining any study of this phenomenon considering it as a unidimensional and a unified construct. In this way, we argue that a differential clinic of this conspiracy phenomenon is a methodological need, prior to the design of empirical clinical studies and to the reflection about preventive actions.