The experience of psychosis is understood as involving a deep sense of estrangement towards the world, the others and oneself, which situates the person at the margins of the common world. The author examines the social and symbolic tools through which societies conceive and enact relationships between the margins and core of the society. Comparison between different socio-cultural contexts leads her to argue that in our society, the notion of integration is biased towards homogeneization and normalization, leaving little room for what is in excess vis-à-vis expert knowledge; in other cultures, social and symbolic tools encourage to take over and pursue the personal and social questioning opened up by psychosis. In parallel, narratives from people suffering from psychosis evoke how they try to tame the experience in appropriating and transforming collective representations and symbols.