The subject of psychosis: A Lacanian perspective (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Question of the Father and Sexual Disturbances in Psychosis
British Journal of Psychotherapy, 2005
The first half of this paper attempts to track and to elaborate Freud's thesis on the mechanism proper to psychosis with particular attention paid to the case of Schreber. It is written emphasizing that Freud was only at the initial stages of his work on the function of the father and that this led to the stumbling blocks he encountered and left him dissatisfied with his work. The second half of the paper looks at the way in which Jacques Lacan took up Freud's work. It looks at how he used it to understand the structure of psychosis in a new way, giving the specific problems that arise in psychosis a central place in the practice of psychoanalysis. How is that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps, but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?. .. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. (Jeanette Winterson 1987, back cover)
The Lacanian Subject - Subject of Desire or the Subject of Drive?
This article reviews the concepts of Alienation and Separation as two distinct "logical moments" constitutive of subjectivity as theorized by Jacques Lacan. These logical moments, mediated by the materiality of language and enabling subjective orientations to the Other, are to be regarded as distinct psychical events that fundamentally structure a person's relation to the dimension of the Other, and without which linguistic subjectivity -becoming a subject of language -would not be possible. It is emphasized here that these events are by no means an inevitable sequence in a natural developmental teleology but are rather contingent occurrences related to both the underlying cognitive capacities of a young child and to the specific nature of the child -caregiver relationship.
2020
It is a pleasure to write a book review on this very interesting, informative and inspiring book on Lacanian approaches to working with babies, children and adolescents. As the editors comment in their fine introduction, “In the long trajectory of his teaching Lacan did not say or write very much exclusively about psychoanalytic practice with children, with “young subjects”” (p. xxi). His early papers on the “Family Complexes” (Lacan, 1938), the “Mirror Stage” (Lacan, 1949) and most of the early seminars describe topics relevant to work with the young child: ego development, ideal ego and ego ideal, identifications, the paternal function and metaphor, need, desire, the desire of the Other and the demand of the Other and the three major clinical structures as well as phobia (Lacan, fourth seminar on the “Object Relation”, 1956-576).
Introduction: The Child's Psyche and the Nature of its Experience
British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1987
No-one committed to the value of a psychodynamic perspective for understanding human behaviour would dispute that one essential tenet of this approach is that a developmental perspective can give valuable insight into the understanding of human behaviour. The child, nay indeed the infant, is the father of the man. It is a perspective which stresses that complex and elaborate forms of human behaviour and motivation can be interpreted as the elaboration of more primitive or infantile drives and conflicts. Our conception of the infant's nature, his drives, his needs, his innate potentialities, and how they will be affected or structured by the environment that may meet or fail to meet his requirements, will affect and colour our later understanding of 'the transference in the analytic situation. We may differ about the drives we attribute to the neonate: for example, in our views about the death instinct or whether envy is a primary or secondary phenomenon. Some, like Balint, Fairbairn, Winnicott or Kohut, may regard these drives as secondary products arising from, and exacerbated by, an environmental situation in which there was a traumatising lack of fit between the child and his significant others. We may differ in the significance we attribute to the role of the relationship with the primary caretaker and how this relationship affects the intrapsychic development of the individual. Some will stress the role of the mother as a transformational object of primitive infantile phantasies inasmuch as she can hold and contain them. But does she also function as a stimulator? Do experiences of actual seductiveness at the hands of the mother affect the intrapsychic development of her child? These differences may affect our views of the nature of the relationship between phantasy and reality. When Freud stressed that the main factors in the aetiology of hysteria arose from unconscious phantasy originating from internal sexual drives rather than actual seduction, did he direct our attention away from external reality? These differences will affect how we account for the fact that some individuals have failed in terms of the sublimation and transformation of their pregenital and aggressive drives. Do we explain this in terms of intra-psychic factors, as essentially an internal failure in the taming of the drives, or do we think that a relevant explanatory variable might be the actual relationship with the parents which perhaps failed to provide theh olding' environment necessary for the transformation of the drives? We may differ in the degree to which we understand psychopathology in terms of fixations due to instinctual conflict, or of developmental arrests due to environmental deficit. If we adopt a position regarding unmet needs, what are the mutative factors of the analytic situation? Is it purely the achievement of insight through interpretation of the transference, or are there elements of a corrective experience provided by the analyst's empathic mirroring which are necessary for the tranformation of some narcissistic configurations as Kohut (1971) argues?
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.
Grant Me the Knowledge of What I Want Because All I Know Is That I Want: A Lacanian View of Hysteria
Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2017
Freud's work with hysterics led him to the discovery of the unconscious and the founding of psychoanalysis. The dream of the beautiful butcher's wife, one of Freud's patients, is examined following Lacan's added insights that give full credit to his well known statement: "The unconscious is structured like a language." Three basic identifications are presented by Lacanian analysis and I add a clinical vignette that exemplifies my work in the treatment of a couple.