Silence of an Author and Silence of a Madman

The purpose of this paper is to analyze silence as a specific experience that is formed on the border between that what is psychotic and that what is creative. Trying to deepen the reflection on the area of silence in our experience I will recall two conceptions: Merleau-Ponty’s and Lacan’s. Both of these authors attempted to go beyond the dichotomy of the subjective and the objective perspective in pursuit of a new definition of the subject. Both of them analyzed cases of mental illness and creativity. Merleau-Ponty focused on the bodily aspects of experience, whereas Lacan focused upon the lingual. However, though the phenomenological and the psychoanalytic approach are not entirely reconcilable, in many points they may turn out to be complementary, especially when brought into particular contexts with Martin Heidegger, a figure each considered their main inspiration.