[Chronic respiratory insufficiency and "coping with the illness"].
Chronic pulmonary disease is an impairment of the respiratory function which leads to some somatic, social and psychological consequences. After a clinical analysis of 150 patients with chronic pulmonary disease, the authors define the psychological characteristics of the patients' reactions and their psychological working-through of the illness. Date analysis shows some transformations in the perception of time (more references to the past, lack of references to the future), and psychological elaborations of the illness which appear in the characteristics of the patients' language and in their personal etiological theories. The most common psychopathologies are anxious and depressive disorders, and confusion. The patients' elaborations about their suffering, their symptoms and their illness make it possible to reopen the discussion about the psychological and metapsychological analysis of respiration. The authors emphasize the characteristics of a "respiratory organization of the libido" and its discontinuity.