Russell Grigg: Lacan, Language and Philosophy, SUNY Press, 2008 [review] (original) (raw)

FROM DE CLÉRAMBAULT’S THEORY OF MENTAL AUTOMATISM TO LACAN’S THEORY OF THE PSYCHOTIC STRUCTURE

In 1966, in a paper on those who have influenced his work, Jacques Lacan suggested that his concept of ‘paranoid knowledge’ and his structural approach to psychoanalysis were closely linked to the work of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. This article examines both of these points. Starting with an introduction to de Clérambault, focusing on his concept ‘mental automatism,’ the link between ‘mental automatism’ and ‘paranoid knowledge’ is discussed. Loyalty to Henri Claude and conflicts around theoretical and clinical issues seem to lie at the basis of Lacan’s initial neglect of his conceptual indebtedness to de Clérambault. Second, the author discusses the presumed connection between mental automatism and Lacan’s structural psychoanalytic theory, which Lacan did not elaborate. It is argued that from a structural perspective, mental automatism comes down to a rupture in the continuity of the signifying chain, which provokes the disappearance of the subject. Furthermore, Lacan’s theory implies the hypothesis that manifestations of mental automatism are determined by a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, where questions related to existence cannot be addressed in a stable way. Lacanian theory thus retained de Clérambault’s notion of a rupture in mental life that lies at the basis of psychosis, but replaced his biological framework with the dimension of the subject as produced through speech.

CONCEPTUALIZING AND TREATING PSYCHOSIS: A LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE STIJN VANHEULE

Starting from the hypothesis that psychosis makes up a structure with a precise status for the unconscious, the author explores how, from a Lacanian point of view, the treatment of psychosis is organized. Special attention is paid to the specificity of the psychotic symptom and the way transference characteristically takes shape. It is indicated that the occurrence of psychotic symptoms bears witness to a subjective crisis, in which no signifiers provide support when, at the level of the unconscious, the subject is dealing with fundamental self-directed epistemic questions (‘who am I?’) and questions concerning the intentionality of the other (‘what do you want?’). Characteristically, such questions are organized around intimate topics like dealing with parenthood and authority; life in the light of death; sexuality in relation to love and procreation; and sexual identity. Psychotic crises are triggered upon confrontations with such issues in daily life, while no support by means of a master signifier or Name-of-the-Father can be found. Crucial to the Lacanian approach to treatment is that the psychoanalyst aims at restoring a place for the subject in relation to the Other, which is threatened in episodes of acute psychosis. Clinical material from Lacanian work with a female patient suffering from manic-depressive psychosis is discussed.

Lacan, Language, and Philosophy

Lacan, Language, and Philosophy cover image: Spring/Summer, Rebecca Driffield, 2003. cover image: colberg visual communication design philosophy / psychology r u s s e l l g r i g g Lacan, Language, and Philosophy

Conceptualizing and Treating Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 2017

Starting from the hypothesis that psychosis makes up a structure with a precise status for the unconscious, the author explores how, from a Lacanian point of view, the treatment of psychosis is organized. Special attention is paid to the specificity of the psychotic symptom and the way transference characteristically takes shape. It is indicated that the occurrence of psychotic symptoms bears witness to a subjective crisis, in which no signifiers provide support when, at the level of the unconscious, the subject is dealing with fundamental self-directed epistemic questions ('who am I?') and questions concerning the intentionality of the other ('what do you want?'). Characteristically, such questions are organized around intimate topics like dealing with parenthood and authority; life in the light of death; sexuality in relation to love and procreation; and sexual identity. Psychotic crises are triggered upon confrontations with such issues in daily life, while no support by means of a master signifier or Name-of-the-Father can be found. Crucial to the Lacanian approach to treatment is that the psychoanalyst aims at restoring a place for the subject in relation to the Other, which is threatened in episodes of acute psychosis. Clinical material from Lacanian work with a female patient suffering from manic-depressive psychosis is discussed.

TREATING PSYCHOSIS TODAY: A LACANIAN TAKE

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2023

This paper examines the principal ideas from Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of psychosis. According to Lacan's theory in the 1950s, the central organizing element of symbolically organized mental life, the Name-of-the-Father, is missing in psychosis. That theory changes with later conceptual developments in Lacan's work that focus on the incompleteness of symbolic functioning. This connects with how, in his works from the late 1960s and the 1970s, Lacan embraces the idea of a fundamental non-rapport and symbolic non-existence at the basis of mental life. In a second step, the paper explores what the Lacanian model of psychosis implies with regard to ethical positioning, addressing the unconscious, handling transference, and crisis and stability in psychosis. A clinical case discussion focuses on a yearlong therapeutic trajectory with a young man with Down's syndrome who suffered from psychotic experiences.

Lacan's Formation of the Subject and Freud's Development of the Ego.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the Austrian neurologist who founded Psychoanalysis, took his experience and theories through many analyses and developments, before coming to name anything. He took great care to make his concepts and theories intelligible, while Lacan was more interested in what cannot be limited to ordinary definitions. He was interested in what happens between words and lines, with the margins of the psyche, with an unconscious La Linguisterie that is the art andscience of the word that fails. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), the French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is considered the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud. Lacan deliberately wrote in a Prose style, that would resist any neat summary of his concepts and avoid being over systematised. His style of writing and analysis is full of play, puns, jokes, metaphors, irony and contradictions that resemble the psychoanalytic ‘free association’ of images words ideas and meanings that change with context and reveal unconscious desires. For this essay, I am using ordinary psychoanalytic terminology and theory. In a Freudian understanding, this self-restriction to representing standard psychoanalytic theory, is achieved through the repressive function of my superego. In a Lacanian understanding, this writing function is achieved in the name of the Symbolic Father of Freud’s Totem and Taboo. If like Lacan however, the playful son, I allowed myself creativity and unconscious fluidity in writing about Freud and Lacan, this would be a very different kind of essay. My experience of studying, reading and interpreting Lacan however, was a fluid and erotic experience, so perhaps his theory of the intimacy of language and desire is correct. “Will our action go so far, then, as to repress the very truth that it bears in its exercise?” (1)