Psychosis, or Radical Belief in the Symptom

ric Laurent
This text is translated from a transcription of the Presentation of the Theme for the Eleventh Congress of the NLS, Athens 20 2!, delivered in "rench at the NLS Congress in Tel Aviv, # $%ne 20 2&

WHAT do we call psychosis? This shall be the object of my introduction to what

will be developed in the preparatory work for the Con ress so as then to meet its scansion durin the Con ress itself! " propose an en#uiry into the way in which we read$ in our present%day practice$ what the word psychosis means for psychoanalysis!

Psychosis and Discourse

WHAT interests us in the practice of psychoanalysis are the forms of discourse by

which the subject inserts himself$ thou h never entirely$ into the established discourses$ into what we call civilisation$ by leanin on his symptom! &reud conceived of the symptom in its relation of opposition to civilisation! &or him it was a form of alternative social bond! The symptom$ he reminds us$ be ins with two people$ in the se'ual bond with the partner$ and is opposed to the common ideals of civilisation! The symptom is a private lan ua e$ distinct from common lan ua e! (acan came to call into #uestion the idea of civilisation as one sole totality! "t is made up of multiple discourses$ which number at least four) the master discourse$ the university discourse$ the discourse of the hysteric$ and the discourse of the psychoanalyst$ which are a ran e of combinations that allow the subject$ divided in the *ther$ to be articulated with his jouissance$ the object a!+ To this multiplicity in civilisation$ another discourse should be added which naws away at each of them)
+

Cf! (acan$ ,!$ The Seminar 'oo( )*++, The ,ther Side of Ps-choanal-sis$ transl! by -! .ri $ /orton$ /ew 0ork$ 1223!

the capitalist discourse where it is the object a that rises to the 4enith and redistributes the possible permutations! The symptom must thus be conceived of in its invariably partial insertion into the discourses!

5+ 51 6 7 a
The theme psychosis comes down to us from the psychopatholo y of the classical clinic which$ in the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth$ endeavoured to classify the different forms of folly$ a much older term$ in a new systematicity! The clinic of the visual detail was e'tended by the clinic of listenin and initially ave us an abundance$ a limitless multiplicity of follies and manias$ before becomin or anised and takin shape$ set out by 8raepelin in line with two major a'es) on one side fell paranoia$ schi4ophrenia and the debates on the paraphrenias9 on the other fell mania and melancholia! The final lastin inventions from this clinic were) in &rance$ Cl:rambault;s mental automatism9 and at the same time$ in the .erman%lan ua e 4one$ 8retschmer;s sensitive paranoias! We have traces of what was at stake therein in the ,aspers<Cl:rambault debates as conveyed by ,ac#ues (acan;s +=>1 Thesis which seals the end of an era!1 &reud took up the term psychosis just as 8raepelin was or anisin the paraphrenias as a form of positive discourse$ as an effort to rebuild a world when the beliefs that supported it had disappeared!> The psychoanalytic discourse was established by &reud upon the belief in the tra ic dimension of *edipus which$ for &reud$ re ulated relationships of libido and jouissance in the established discourses of post%?ictorian civilisation from which psychoanalytic discourse was emer in ! The nineteenth%century tra edies$ not only the tra edies in reality$ but also the literary tra edies whose authors @ ?ictor Hu o$ Au ust 5trinber $ Henrik "bsen @ still speak to us today$ were ivin an epic form to this moment of civilisation in which the rei n of prohibition defined the ideal hori4on of discourse! Tra edy and the reat -omantic epic of the nineteenth century formed a social bond! We are still sensitive to this$ as we are to the musical tra edies$ with opera from ?erdi to Wa ner still bein performed around the lobe! With these literary forms that were formin a social bond$ the author took the shape of a demiur e$ a special bein $ a new priest of a reli ion still in the makin @ even /iet4sche believed in this for a while! &reud democratised the tra ic dimension of the nineteenth century by supposin that the common status of the subject of the time was to live out his world as a tra edy! The *edipus Comple'$ with its scientific name$ was a common$ banal$ ordinary tra edy for all and sundry$ settin the confrontation between father and son in their radical misreco nition! &reud ave an epic form to this banal tra edy and (acan suspects that he did so because he was himself cau ht up in the era;s

(acan$ ,!$ .e la ps-chose parano/a0%e dans ses rapports avec la personnalit1$ 5euil$ Aaris$ +=3B! Cf! &reud$ 5!$ The Cechanism of Aaranoia transl! by A! D ,!$ 5trachey in Ps-choanal-tic Notes on an A%to2iographical Acco%nt of a Case of Paranoia$ in The Standard Edition of the Complete Ps-chological 3or(s4$ ?ol! E""$ Ho arth Aress$ (ondon$ +=BF$ p! G1!
>

discovery of the facticity of paternity!H The collapse of the Ancien -: ime and the belief in the &ather it used to support$ alon with the accumulation in the industrial metropolises of forms of kinship that hitherto did not mi'$ revealed the arbitrary nature of the &ather! The ordinary tra edy of *edipus ave a common shape to the discourses on kinship structures$ alon side the realisation of the classificatory enterprise of the psychiatry that was contemporary with &reud! The psychoses were understood by &reud as a form of productive discourse$ sustainin the effort of subjects who fall wide of any belief in the father and ordinary tra edy$ and respondin to the clinical field newly systematised by psychiatry! Iut this back and forth could not last9 it was an unsteady balance! &irstly$ psychiatry itself went on to distance itself from takin into account the constituent si ns of psychosis and the productive forms of discourse by silencin them$ reducin them to the body;s interior as psychiatry;s place in medicine shifted$ and medicine;s place in science too! *n the side of psychoanalysis$ it distanced itself for structural reasons from the epic form of psychical conflict @ another name for ordinary tra edy @ so as to turn to the shape by which the symptom;s formal envelopeB treats the drive and phenomena of jouissance$ a shape that is not necessarily conflictive! This twofold distancin forms our present situation and allows us to read just to what e'tent it is on the basis of the #uestion of psychosis that the twofold face of the clinical phenomenon @ belief in the /ame%of%the%&ather and belief in the symptom @ is best broached!

The Paternal Metaphor, I & II

"/ the theory$ in the classical phase of his teachin $ (acan first situated the ori inality
and productivity of psychosis on the basis of the contrast with the normal functionin of the paternal metaphor! &rom the banal *edipal tra edy he e'tracts the structure in which the /ame%of%the%&ather is an operator that acts upon the eni ma$ for the child$ of the mother;s desire! "t also forms a uarantee because the phenomena of si nification are inscribed in lan ua e with a phallic value!G

/ame%of%the%&ather ! Cother;s Jesire x

/ame%of%the%&ather

Asychosis$ as a productive form$ is what occurs when the /ame%of%the%&ather no lon er plays the role of this operator! "t lays bare the fact that lan ua e does not house the phenomena of jouissance) the subject;s body is the locus of a jouissance that cannot be symbolised under the value phi$ a jouissance of drive phenomena that are delocalised outside the ero enous 4ones!
(acan$ ,!$ Aroposition on = *ctober +=G3 on the Asychoanalyst of the 5chool transl! by -! .ri in Anal-sis$ "ssue G$ +==B$ p! ++ KT/$ facticit1 could also be translated as fictiveness or artificialityL! B (acan$ ,!$ *n Cy Antecedents in 5crits, The "irst Complete Edition in English$ transl! by I! &ink$ /orton D Co!$ p! B1! G Cf! (acan$ ,!$ *n a Muestion Arior to Any Aossible Treatment of Asychosis$ in 5crits, op& cit&$ p! HGB!
H

A ,

A jouissance that cannot be ne ativised imposes itself$ and at the same time$ words$ incomprehensible phenomena$ unheard of si ns and unfamiliar messa es$ impose themselves and conver e towards the subject in an order where$ between a new *ther and jouissance$ there is an impossibility of their conjunction! Common lan ua e takes on new accents!

A,
(acan described the effort at stabilisation between si nifiers and si nification that constitute a lan ua e based on the contributions of ,akobson;s lin uistics! The latter allowed the false unity of 5aussure;s si n to be left behind$ combinin codes and messa es$ not only throu h a code that permits of producin messa es$ but throu h the effects of the return of messa es on the code!3

5 s
Code%messa es and messa e%codes are produced in a lin uistics of speech%in%action where the very fact of speakin $ the very lan ua e acts of the psychotic subject$ modify the lan ua e he uses to the point that the new lan ua e$ modified by the lan ua e acts$ can take on board the meanin less messa es that were circulatin outside any norm!F The conse#uences of this radical approach to the psychotic phenomenon$ and to the clinical e'perience of the outcome that the psychotic subject can find$ allowed (acan to eneralise his /ame%of%the%&ather by pluralisin it$ as ,ac#ues%Alain Ciller showed in his e'tended commentary on the path that oes from the first paternal metaphor in (acan to the second$ where from the pluralisation of the /ames%of%the%&ather one passes over to lan ua e itself as that which takes char e of the phenomena of jouissance!=

/A
3

/A NsO A

Cf! +2id!$ p! HB1) Pa code constituted by messa es about the code and KPL a messa e reduced to what$ in the code$ indicates the messa e! F Cf! (acan$ ,!$ 5ubversion of the 5ubject and the Jialectic of JesireP in 5crits$ op& cit!$ p! GF>) Code messa es and messa e codes separate out into pure forms in the psychotic subjectP! = Ciller$ ,!%A!$ Q'timit: transl! by &! Cassardier%8enney in Iracher$ C!$ et al&$ Theor- of .isco%rse6 S%27ect, Str%ct%re and Societ-$ /ew 0ork Rniversity Aress$ +==H$ p! FB!

,
"n this sense$ the second paternal metaphor in (acan is a eneralisation from the sin ular psychotic effort to the clinical field as a whole! &rom the psychotic subject we also have to learn how the neurotic subject forms a lan ua e from his symptom$ and that this symptom stems from both the first and second paternal metaphors! The second paternal metaphor$ in which the whole of lan ua e takes char e of the form of the effort of namin jouissance$ is closer to Chomsky than to ,akobson! The universal rule of the locus of the *ther tries to name this jouissance! Chomsky used an enli htenin metaphor to desi nate this effort! He said that it is possible to undertake the ta'onomy of all the fish$ to establish the rule for evolution from fossils$ to describe all the variations in the species$ but so lon as one doesn;t understand fluid dynamics$ one will never understand why all fish tend to be shark% shaped! He sou ht to find out what the fluid dynamics of lan ua e are! He didn;t mana e! He did ive some consideration to the limits of his pro ramme$ but at the very least the advanta e of his dream of a lan ua e%or an was to articulate lan ua e with bodily phenomena! &or us$ the fluid dynamics that ives order to lan ua e is the way in which the enjoyin substance is taken up by lan ua e itself! The lesson that the psychotic subject has transmitted to us in his sin ular efforts was eneralised for us by (acan to the entirety of the clinical field! There is a real of structures that is plun ed into this particular use that defines$ after (acan$ the field of our practice and our e'perience! 0es$ meanin is use$ but this use is the use of namin jouissance! (an ua e itself becomes$ not the locus of Chomsky;s dream of a universal rule$ but the locus of eneralised e#uivocation! (acan does not distin uish between a enerative component of synta'$ semantics$ and pra matics! He considers e#uivocations at the syntactical level$ e#uivocations at the level of si nification$ and e#uivocations at the level of pra matics! *ur effort likewise lies on the nether side of attempts at classification! The parado' is that we took on board the word psychosis at a time when a new systematicity$ a new classification$ was emer in in the discourses! (acan;s teachin turned this approach to psychosis into the indication of a path where$ just as we consider the full set of e#uivocations at the level of the *ther rather than the rules$ we consider just how much in each case the subject is unclassifiable! Les inclassa2les de la clini0%e was a title chosen by ,ac#ues%Alain Ciller for one of our con resses!+2 The clinic;s unclassifiable cases mark the effort by which the symptom$ beyond roupin s accordin to typical forms$ can desi nate a subject;s sin ularity! This is the hori4on of ,oyce%The%5inthome$ which is both a proper name$ ,oyce$ and a common noun$ sinthome Nwith its overhauled use$ of courseO$ marked by the definite article! ,oyce%The%5inthome is conju ated in (acan;s effort towards the sin ularity of writin ,oyce;s knot! ,ac#ues%Alain Ciller noted that ,oyce;s sublimation is not the sublimation of an unconscious that conveys its truth$ but a truth that has made room for a knowled e! To read 8l-sses$ *edipal anecdote about ,oyce is not particularly useful! *ne can easily read in the bio raphies devoted
+2

Cf! "-CA$ La conversation d9Arcachon, Cas rares 6 les inclassa2les de la clini0%e$ Aaon Collection$ A alma<5euil$ Aaris$ +==F!

to him how everythin that ,oyce had read$ the way he wanted to found a literature in a different way and also to become a new prophet in his lan ua e$ is an effort by which$ throu h literature and the messa es he sends$ he has subverted lan ua e itself! This is not merely as in ,akobson where the messa e returns on the code$ rather ,oyce;s subversion operated to the point that one was able to say that after ,oyce the Qn lish lan ua e had become a dead lan ua e! This death was e'a erated) it died and it was resuscitated$ but transformed! (iterature passed throu h the ,oyce moment$ was transformed$ and recreated a world of characters$ but differently! Ahilippe 5ollers wrote Paradis$ then stopped$ there was a period of silence$ then he wrote 3omen! The literature that transformed anew after ,oyce has taken up Colly Iloom;s dialo ue$ turnin it to different purposes$ and is now inscribin the womanly #uestion at the forefront of the eni mas that literature must decipher! (et;s say that literature has been e'plorin $ with the psychotic subject$ what it is to be the woman that men are missin ++!

Ordinary and Out of the Ordinary

eneralisation$ in which the eneralised$ ordinary status of the psychotic effort has led us to consider the ordinary forms of psychosis$ and no lon er just the e'traordinary forms that stand in contrast to the banal tra ic dimension$ starts off on the contrary from the ordinary forms of delusional metaphor$ from the effort of particular si nification$ from the effort of reducin meanin to writin which occurs in the symptom of one and all$ re ardless of whether one has one via the e'perience of psychoanalysis or not! "f one has one via the e'perience of psychoanalysis$ one stands a chance of knowin about it$ otherwise it will take one lon er to become a character in one;s written story as (acan put it! *rdinary psychosis is the name of a work pro ramme that be an in the Clinical 5ection when we asked ourselves what the psychotic subject is when the psychosis has not been tri ered! We started off from this #uestion and e'amined 5chreber;s te't as a way of situatin it!+1 Then$ with un%tri ered psychosis we realised that a reat deal of thin s happen in this space prior to the moment when somethin collapses or becomes detached! There was the punctuation of the Antibes meetin +> which allowed for a shape to be iven to all these phenomena by namin the phenomena of plu in in and out of the *ther$ definin a whole field of the ordinary clinic of psychosis that stood to be e'plored! However$ this field of ordinary psychosis does not mean that everythin is psychotic! *ne should not mi' up the lessons to be learnt from the psychotic subject Nwhich bear on the entirety of the clinical fieldO with a clinical cate ory as such$ makin it the most si4eable cate ory of our e'perience! We would be in a similar situation to the time of 8raepelin$ when some ei hty percent of people hospitalised on psychiatric wards were considered to be paranoiac! We would have ordinary psychosis everywhere! /o wayS This is a work pro ramme$ an en#uiry$ and an
++ +1

,*0CQA/

Cf! (acan$ ,!$ *n a Muestion Arior to Any Aossible Treatment of Asychosis$ op& cit&$ p! H31! "-CA$ Le Concilia2%le d9Angers, Effets de s%rprise dans la ps-chanal-se$ Aaon collection$ A alma<5euil$ +==3 +> "-CA$ La ps-chose ordinaire, La Convention d9Anti2es$ Aaon Collection$ A alma<5euil$ Aaris$ +===!

orientation we are holdin until we know what we are dealin with! Iesides$ the day will likely come when the word psychosis will be so out of synch with the spirit of the times that instead we will be speakin in terms of ordinary delusions! As ,ac#ues%Alain Ciller puts it in the most recent edition of Le Point+H$ with the Qrasmian tones of ,ac#ues (acan$ of +n Praise of "oll-) everyone is mad$ i!e! everyone is delusional+B! This does not mean that everyone is psychotic$ but all of this is part of our contemporary en#uiry in the twenty%first century into what the #uestion of psychosis means for us! ,ust as the ordinary status of psychosis does not mean that it has a universal spread$ the lessons we draw from the psychotic subject do not make the paternal function vanish! The paternal function remains$ albeit modified! There is a father with a more ordinary status! (acan called this father the one who is still able to 1pater$ to impress or ama4e$ with a play on the word pater!+G He is the one who constitutes an e'ception$ who is capable of surprisin us! ,ac#ues%Alain Ciller took this e'ample to show that$ even in his clownish function$ one can see the contemporary politician strivin to impress$ cau ht in the media$ in the communication industry$ tryin to impress!+3 *f course$ it has to be done in the ri ht way! 0ou can see a ain what is at stake in the .reek elections today! This evenin we will know whether it is the technicians of the Quro or the intrepid youn Ale'is Tsipras$ who has impressed everyone$ steppin out with his flamboyant rhetoric tryin to have us believe he holds the solution @ would to .od that it were true$ but it does not seem alto ether convincin ! Iut here we have an effort to impress$ in view of which there is a phenomenon of adherence$ of belief! The one who impresses is the one who shows up in our world of ever more rules and re ulations$ ever more bureaucracy$ ever more vi ilance across all levels to e'plain to us our hy iene of life and death$ and mana es to do thin s differently from everyone else! "ndividuals like these enter our special cate ory and collaborate in our en#uiry into how the ordinary /ame%of%the%&ather of e'istence transforms once we have our hori4on of the unclassifiable! "n this respect$ " would like to iterate just what an instrument of public service the journal of the /ew (acanian 5chool is! "n the seventh issue of :%rl-;'%rlwe find ,ac#ues%Alain Ciller;s Course on L9A%tre 0%i n9existe pas et ses comit1s d91thi0%e$ revisited and condensed in a perfectly readable form$ on the #uestion of namin +F! An article by "an Hackin +=$ about the differin perspectives of 8ripke and Autnam on namin $ shows how indeed$ from a lo ical standpoint$ the last word that we can read in analytic philosophy and contemporary lo ic rests on the point at which proper name and common noun @ proper name and natural%kind term @ meet and radically call into #uestion any attempt at reducin the name to its description!
Ciller$ ,!%A!$ The (ady 5ymptom$ transl! by A! Arice in :%rl-;'%rl-$ "ssue F$ *ctober 12+1$ p! >23! (acan$ ,!$ There are four discoursesP$ transl! by A! Arice in C%lt%re<Clinic$ "ssue +$ 5prin 12+>! +G (acan$ ,!$ Le s1minaire livre )+), 4o% pire$ 5euil$ Aaris$ 12++$ p! 12F! +3 Ciller$ ,!%A!$ *ut%of%the%*rdinary$ the Ietter to "mpress$ transl! by A! Arice in :%rl-;'%rl-$ "ssue F$ *ctober 12+1$ p! >2>! +F Ciller$ ,!%A!$ &ive (essons on (an ua e and the -eal transl! by A! Arice in :%rl-;'%rl-$ "ssue 3$ Cay 12+1$ pp! B=%++3! += Hackin $ "!$ Autnam;s Theory of /atural 8inds and Their /ames is /ot the 5ame as 8ripke;s$ in :%rl-;'%rl-$ "ssue 3$ +2id&$ pp! +1=%H=!
+B +H

This name is referred back to the fundamental act that 8ripke calls the initial baptism129 an encounter which for us echoes the baptism of jouissance that the subject receives as a shock that occurs at one point and then afterwards finds its name! This name is ne't transmitted in the set of possible names accordin to 8ripke or accordin to Autnam! " thank Adrian Arice$ the journal;s editor$ who has also one to the reat len th of writin the introductory article Kto Hackin ;s paperL1+$ alon with the whole :%rl-;'%rl- editorial team$ for an issue that stands as a very useful instrument for the preparation of the Athens Con ress!

The !nd of the "Pri#ile$e% of Madness

" W*R(J like to round up on the followin

point) the ordinary aspect of the psychotic effort and the fact that everyone is mad$ or that bein mad is no lon er a privile e! This effort has to allow us to et out of the confusion between flesh%and%blood fathers and what we call &ather in psychoanalysis! &athers are not responsible for the psychosis of their child any more than mothers are responsible for their children;s autism! *ne day$ just as our psychoanalyst collea ues with autistic children have come out and said what prompted them to create institutions to tend to their children and invent the mi' between educative and clinical approaches that saved them and helped their children$ there will have to be a discreet comin out of our collea ues with psychotic children! (ikewise$ our a iornamento on our uses of psychosis will o via a discreet comin out! "t will be part of the way in which psychoanalysts must speak about psychosis in the twenty%first century! There are veils that will have to be drawn back$ and in which dialo ues with parent associations and with other users of the cate ory of psychosis will form part of a eneral conversation on psychosis$ which psychoanalysis must help facilitate in a more ordinary way in this century before us!

Translated from the &rench 'y (drian Price &ootnotes esta'lished 'y the translator

12 1+

8ripke$ 5!$ Naming and Necessit-$ Ilackwell$ *'ford$ +=F2$ p! =G! Arice$ A!$ *n the -eal and /atural%8ind Terms$ in :%rl-;'%rl-$ "ssue 3$ op& cit&$ pp! ++=%13!