In the psychological or psychoanalytical literature, it is uncommon to find the “psychic errancy” understood as a concept or as a healthy process. This research presents our construction of a conceptual and metapsychological model of the psychic errancy by cross referencing some conceptualizations of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. We demonstrate that the psychic errancy is a dynamic that allows the subject to adapt to his/her internal and external environments. The subject never knows what to expect because the Real is unpredictable, which is the starting point for the psychic errancy. The issues of a confrontation with the Real cannot be known in advance, but the subject will have to overhaul his/her intrapsychic bearings and identity anchors in order to deconstruct, redefine and restructure his/her representational system. Contrary to what most authors claim, disorders are not due to psychic errancy itself. In fact, they are due to the traumatogenic confrontation with the Real, which can be traumatic if the subject is unable to find a way to live within his/her errancy. Here we reveal some discursive erratic manifestations which testify to the subject's positioning either within his/her errancy or facing it. Positioning can be active or passive, and the subject can use the errancy or fight against it. We will examine depression, the main symptom of a hindered errancy, as a corollary affect of any existential crisis: the subject can be depressed if he/she does not know how to live within the errancy, meaning when the subject no longer feels sameness, because of his/her inability to echo his/her internal and external environments.
