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The psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients is often difficult through a sole reliance on associative speech. Psychotic subjects might not be apt at pursuing the course of regression induced by associative speech or this regression might lead them to psychic areas where de‐symbolization is so extensive that only delusion or dissociation are available to them. A medium has often been suggested so that the representation of the drive and the formalization of infantile sexuality may unfold more safely and efficiently. Two modalities of use of a malleable medium will be considered in this paper: Gisela Pankow's clay modelling and psychoanalytic psychodrama as it has developed in France, Belgium and Switzerland since the end of the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]