Delusion

delusion (dÈlire) Delusions are usually defined in psychiatry as firmly

held, incorrigible false beliefs, inconsistent with the information available and

with the beliefs of the subject's social group (see American Psychiatric

Association, 1987: 395; Hughes, 1981: 206). Delusions are the central clinical

  feature of PARANOIA, and can range from single ideas to complex networks of

   beliefs (called delusional systems).

      In Lacanian terms, the paranoiac lacks the NAME-OF-THE-FATHER, and the

  delusion is the paranoiac's attempt to fill the hole left in his symbolic universe

by the absence of this primordial signifier. Thus the delusion is not the 'illness'

  of paranoia itself; it is, on the contrary, the paranoiac's attempt to heal himself,

  to pull himself out of the breakdown of the symbolic universe by means of a

  substitute formation. As Freud commented in his work on Schreber, 'What we

  take to be the pathological production, the delusional formation, is in reality

  the attempt at recovery, the reconstruction' (Freud, 1911c: SE XII, 71).

      Lacan insists on the significance of the delusion and stresses the importance

  of attending closely to the psychotic patient's own account of his delusion. The

  delusion is a form of discourse, and must therefore be understood as 'a field of

signification that has organised a certain signifier' (S3, 121). For this reason all

  delusional phenomena are 'clarified in reference to the functions and structure

  of speech' (S3, 310).

      The paranoid delusional construction may take many forms. One common

form, the 'delusion of persecution', revolves around the Other of the Other, a

  hidden subject who pulls the strings of the big Other (the symbolic order), and

   who controls our thoughts, conspires against us, watches us, etc.