The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter XI

-          Because Lacan is approaching matters from a structural perspective, he believes that it is not entirely necessary to take psychotic phenomena at face-value. In other words, superficial phenomena, visible mainly to the eye, do not divulge the intricate blueprints of psychosis. This is what Lacan means when he differentiates the structural approach from the phenomenological approach: “[O]ur confidence in the analysis of the phenomenon is quite distinct from that of the phenomenological point of view, which strives to discover what it contains of reality in itself. From the point of view that guides us we don’t have this a priori confidence in the phenomenon, for the simple reason that our way of proceeding is scientific and that it’s the starting point of modern science not to trust the phenomena and to look for something more subsistent behind them that explains them” (P.143).

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter X

-          In traditional approaches to the delusion, the normal aspect of the ego is said to be in a position that permits it to resolve the problems associated with its unstable aspect: “one need only recall the formula that is sometimes used, carelessly, regarding the way analysis works, namely that our leverage point is the healthy part of the ego” (P.131). The term ‘leverage point’ is operative in this case because it denotes a location that can be relied on, pressed upon, for a desired effect. In other words, according to thwink.org, it is a “point in a system where force can be applied.” Lacan is not satisfied with this approach

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter IX

-          Lacan is disdainful of the idea that the patient is fundamentally incapable of reproducing his experiences through words. There is a current within mainstream thought that likes to think that there are certain elements of experience that escape articulation. There needs to be an abandonment of “the idea, implicit in many systems, that what the subject puts into words is an improper and always distorted enunciation of a lived experience that would be some irreducible reality” (P.118). Lacan justifies this claim by saying that there is an intrinsic link between the unconscious and the symbolic: “in unconscious matters the relation of the subject to the symbolic is fundamental” (P.118). In a way, the unconscious itself is structured according to the logic of the signifier, the paradigmatic element of the symbolic: “The unconscious is fundamentally structured, woven, chained, meshed, by language. And not only does the signifier play as big a role there as the signified does, but it plays the fundamental role. In fact, what characterizes language is the system of signifiers as such” (P.119).

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter VIII

-          Lacan once again brings up the idea of defence. This is a term that has been heavily utilized by mainstream psychoanalysis, hence producing Lacan’s chagrin. “The word defence is used today to refer to anything and everything” (P.102). Lacan states that when psychoanalysis first started to sprout out of Freud’s final major collaboration with Breuer, defence was used in a “specific sense” (P.102). Abwerhrhysterie (defensive hysteria), was mainly associated with mnemic (memory) disturbances. The inter-relatedness of Lacan’s three orders is observable in the fact that a slight shift in imaginary relations can have a severe impact on the structure of the symbolic: “Freud realized that there are modifications to the imaginary structure of the world and that they interfere with modifications to the symbolic structure – this is really how it has to be described, since remembering necessarily takes place within the symbolic order” (P.104).

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter VII

-          An addition to Lacan’s claim that the experience of the psychotic differs from that of the religious mystic: “In effect, this he [God] is multiplied, neutralized, emptied, or so it seems, of subjectivity. The persecutory phenomenon takes on the character of indefinitely repeated signs, and the persecutor, to the extent that he is its support, is no longer anything more than the shadow of the persecutory object” (P.90). In a way, this is related to the earlier claim that the psychotic cannot have a meaningful relationship with this all-powerful figure.

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter VI

-          Concerning the level of certainty that exists in the neurotic and the psychotic: “What characterizes a normal subject is precisely that he never takes seriously certain realities that he recognizes exist. You are surrounded by all sorts of realities about which you are in no doubt, some of which are particularly threatening, but you don’t take them fully seriously, for you think, along with Paul Claudel’s subtitle, that the worst is not always certain, and maintain yourselves in an average, [...] state of blissful uncertainty, which makes possible for you a sufficiently relaxed existence. Surely, certainty is the rarest of things for the normal subject” (P.74). However, the psychotic is an individual who is certain of his delusional constructions. There is no sense of ambivalence concerning the direction of auditory, ocular, etc. hallucinations. There is no doubt involved.

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter V

-          Drawing upon another case study, Lacan emphasizes the limpid quality of the unconscious in psychosis. The subject under examination “brought the unconscious out into the open [...] It brought it out into the open because, owing to the exceptional circumstances, everything that in another subject would have passed into repression was found in him” (P.59) to be latent.

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter IV

-          Lacan begins by saying that the neurotic and the psychotic have a different relation with reality, and by reality he means psychic reality. “When he triggers his neurosis the subject elides, scotomizes as it has since been said, a part of his psychical reality, or, in another language, a part of his id. This part is forgotten but continues to make itseld heard. How? In a manner that all my teaching emphasizes – in a symbolic manner” (P.44-45). Here, Lacan is describing Verdrangung (repression) and symptomological formation. “In the first article I mentioned Freud evokes a storehouse that the subject sets aside in reality and in which he preserves resources to be used in constructing the external world – this is where psychosis will borrow its material from” (P.45). While neurotic usage of this material is symbolic, the psychotic directly uses this material. In other words, the content that the psychotic uses to construct his world was never properly repressed. If it were properly repressed, the material being transmuted into symbolic form would have been a foregone conclusion.

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter III

-          One of the opening points of this chapter deals with the innovative notion, thought of by Freud, that psychotic episodes are triggered by an intense reaction to homosexual urges that have resurfaced after a period of dormancy. Staying true to his dedication to Freud, he states that this is a groundbreaking idea that diverges from all hitherto theories of paranoia. However, Lacan is not content. “People speak of defense against the supposed irruption – and why this irruption at this point? – of the homosexual tendency. But this is far from having been proved” (P.30). Here we observe a Lacanian criticism located at two levels. On the one hand, Lacan believes that the primary process that permits the onset of psychosis is Verwerfung (foreclosure), i.e. the expulsion of an originary signifier into the plane of the real. On the other hand, Lacan is unsatisfied with the usage of the term defense, which he believes to be used too whimsically.

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956 – Notes on Chapter II

-          In the second chapter, Lacan tackles the definition of paranoia. Taking Kraeplin’s definition as his starting point, he contends that there isn’t any truth to it. To quote Kraeplin’s definition: “Paranoia is distinguished from the others because it is characterized by the gradual development of internal causes and according to a progressive evolution of a stable delusional system that is impossible to disturb and establishes itself with total preservation of clarity and order in thought, will, and action” (quoted on P.17).