Changes

The [[full ]] title of the doctoral thesis that signaled Jacques [[Lacan]]'s entry into [[psychiatry ]] was De la [[psychose ]] paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité (On [[paranoiac ]] [[psychosis ]] as it relates to the [[personality]]). The [[work ]] was dated September 7, 1932, when Lacan was thirty-one years old.

An important [[moment ]] in the [[history ]] of [[surrealism ]] is the convergence of the concern for [[language ]] and the interest in [[psychoanalysis ]] and psychiatry. The [[surrealists ]] argued that the pathological is not meaningless and that it is a mode of expression which has its own validity. It is possible that Lacan's famous slogan 'the [[unconscious ]] is [[structured ]] like a language' may owe much to the surrealists' attention to the [[linguistic ]] expression of [[psychic ]] phenomena. It has been suggested that some [[surrealist ]] [[texts ]] prefigure aspects of [[Lacanian ]] [[theory]]. Indeed, it could be argued that the surrealists were the first to realise that psychoanalysis is essentially a question of language. They fully [[understood ]] why the method introduced by [[Freud ]] and [[Breuer ]] was given the [[name ]] 'the talking [[cure]]' by [[Anna 0.]], one of Breuer's [[patients]]. Besides language, the surrealists were interested in certain aspects of [[femininity]]. '[[Woman]]-as-[[victim]]' is a common theme in surrealist art.

Lacan's first articles were published between 1926 and 1933 while he was [[training ]] as a [[psychiatrist]]. During this [[time ]] he studied many patients [[suffering ]] from [[delusions ]] and became interested in their disorders of language. His research convinced him that no [[psychical ]] phenomenon could arise completely independently of the [[subject]]'s personality. The major work of this period was his doctoral thesis: '[[Paranoid ]] psychosis and its relation to the personality' (1932), which included a study of a [[female ]] [[psychotic ]] whom he called Aimee. While not a [[psychoanalyst]], Lacan used some analytical [[concepts ]] in his account of his [[patient ]] at a time when Freud was not well known in [[France]]. Lacan's thesis was one of the first attempts in France to [[interpret ]] a psychosis in [[terms ]] of the [[total ]] history of the patient.

Aimee was a thirty-eight-year-old railway clerk who inexplicably attacked one of the best-known actresses in [[Paris]], wounding her with a knife as she entered the theatre one evening. Aimee consistently maintained that the actress, and [[others]], had been spreading slander [[about ]] her. She had never met her alleged persecutors. Aimee had [[literary ]] ambitions, but her novels and poems had been repeatedly rejected by one publisher after [[another]].

It was the unusual [[nature ]] of her writings which first led Lacan to take an interest in her [[case]]. In his view, Aimee attacked an [[ideal ]] [[image ]] of woman who [[enjoys ]] [[social ]] [[freedom ]] and [[power]], the very type of woman she hoped to become by pursuing a literary career. The dominating woman she envied, and who became her persecutor, was initially embodied by her sister and then by a close woman friend to whom Aimee once admitted: 'I feel that I am [[masculine]].' Aimee's condition, then, was rooted in a problem of [[identification]], in a confusion of [[self ]] and [[other]]. She wished to be a rich, influential novelist, and attacked the incarnation of her [[ambition]]: an actress who represented her [[ego-ideal]]. In Lacan's view Aimee was clearly suffering from delusions of [[being ]] persecuted. A remarkable feature of Aimee's delusions was that when she was found [[guilty ]] before the law and imprisoned, the delusions disappeared. The [[wish ]] behind her delusions was one of unconscious self-[[punishment]], probably in [[order ]] to deal with her [[guilt ]] [[feelings]]. Her psychosis was 'self-punishment [[paranoia]]'. This was one of Freud's concepts and referred to those who are criminals from a [[sense ]] of guilt. Freud described how certain criminal [[acts ]] give relief to [[subjects ]] who suffer from oppressive feelings of guilt before the crime. He also wrote how [[children ]] can quite often be naughty on [[purpose ]] to provoke punishment, and then are quiet and settled after the punishment.

Lacan's observations led him to the conclusion that Aimee's assault on the actress was in fact a means of punishing herself by attacking her ideal. Lacan's comments rely heavily on Freud's argument that paranoia is in part a [[defense ]] against [[homosexuality]], a [[process ]] of [[disavowal ]] (a [[refusal ]] to acknowledge) which gives rise to the [[delusion ]] of [[persecution ]] and to the identification of the loved one with the persecutor. In this case, and another which Lacan discusses concerning the Papin sisters, self and other merge all too easily and [[gender ]] becomes uncertain.

Aimee was not only a patient of Lacan's, but was also a [[cause ]] celebrity for the surrealists. Lacan's thesis included a selection of Aimee's copious writings, which were produced at the height of her psychosis and which virtually stopped when it abated. The literary qualities of Aimee's work were much appreciated and discussed by members of the surrealist movement of which Lacan was a part.