New Duranty: PARIS — Serge Hefez, a practicing psychiatrist, has identified a new mental illness among the French: obsessive Sarkosis, an unhealthy fascination with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

“As I listened to my patients during consultations, many of them mentioned Sarkozy by name,” Dr. Hefez said. “He’s penetrated some of their deepest fantasies. I noticed all this passion in people speaking of him, and I thought there is something particular about this man — he’s like a reflection of us in the mirror.”

The French project themselves onto Mr. Sarkozy, too, Dr. Hefez said.

“He’s the incarnation of the postmodern man, obsessed with himself, turned toward pleasure, autonomous and narcissistic,” the psychiatrist said. “And he exhibits his joys and sorrows, all his private life, his sentimental doubts and pleasures. He represents the individualism of the society to the extreme, that it’s the individual who counts, not the society.”...

Television covers Mr. Sarkozy’s every gesture, in both homage and mockery, itself an effort to create distance from the phenomenon that it perpetuates and magnifies. It is all part of what the French have come to call the “pipolisation” of political life, a term, presumably derived from People magazine, that refers to the idolatry of celebrities and soap opera. Dr. Hefez considers the trend an example of “democracy turning against itself, as Tocqueville foresaw.”...

The divorce and remarriage further upset the French. “He was theirs, and then suddenly he becomes hers, and now he has to restore this sense of ‘I’m yours, because I’m here to serve the country,’ ” the friend said, sighing. “Which is no question the case, but he has to demonstrate it.”

The Rue89 news Web site asked: “After a year of dependency, how can we stop being Sarkotoxicated?”