Luxury: a borderline pathology?

A careful examination of the notion of the limit is central to understanding both the issues of luxury and that of contemporary psychopathology. Over the last fifty years, the question of the limit has unsettled the clinical framework of psychoanalysis, by adding a fourth item to the psychosis-perversion-nevrosis tripartite framework, but it may also provide with a key to better understand the malaise of the “globalized” society.The leads opened by Freud and Lacan, then taken up by Fethi Benslama on the issue of segregation, will be explored further and the social function of luxury in a society ready to yield to hyper-hedonism and globalization will be interrogated.