Aims. -This article sets out to delineate and understand more fully the concept of delusional intuition from the standpoints of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. We question the term of "intuition" itself, and wonder if it should be retained. We also ask whether delusional intuition is specific to a particular form of psychosis. Methods. -We start with a review of the psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature. This retrospective approach enables us to draw away from the phenomenon of delusional intuition as such, and to explore it as an element in the psychotic structure that breaks into reality. Results. -The contributions of psychoanalysis enable delusional intuition to be seen as an elementary phenomenon, a very specific triggering moment in the onset of psychosis. This sudden occurrence - which does not produce the classic unsettling effects appears to immediately satisfy the subject and provide him or her with an answer, a solution, in the form of a revelation or illumination, requiring no further delusional explanation, justification or interpretation. Discussion. -The discussion, which calls on psychoanalytic references, explores the relationships between delusional intuition and the type of psychosis, between intuition and interpretation, between the classic onset (which, roughly, proceeds from enigma to perplexity and on to certainty) and this particular type of onset which seems to proceed in the opposite direction. Conclusion. -Delusional intuition is an elementary phenomenon that imposes itself on the subject with the full weight of its certainty, with an obviousness that is sometime described as a moment of illumination. The phenomenon is often backed up by delusional interpretations. This type of onset of psychosis is particular in that it does not result in an unsettling of structure. Its function appears allied to that of a prosthesis protecting the subject from the risk of disorganization, immediate, taking the form of a revelation of the meaning of objects and of the world in general. (C) 2018 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
