Psychology

psychology (psychologie) In his pre-1950 writings, Lacan sees psychoanalysis and psychology as parallel disciplines which can cross-fertilise each other. Although he is very critical of the conceptual inadequacies of associationist psychology, Lacan argues that psychoanalysis can help to build an 'authentic psychology' free from such errors by providing it with truly scientific concepts such as the IMAGo and the COMPLEx (Lacan, 1936).

makes of such comparisons, it is clear that Lacan's discussions of Psychosis

  are among the most significant and original aspects of his work.

      Lacan's most detailed discussion of Psychosis appears in his seminar of

  1955-6, entitled simply The Pychoses. It is here that he expounds what come

  to be the main tenets of the Lacanian approach tO MADNESs. Psychosis is defined

  as one of the three clinical StructureS, one of which is defmed by the operation

of FORECLOSURE. In this operation, the NAME-OF-THE-FATHER is not integrated in

  the Symbolic universe of the psychotic (it is 'foreclosed'), with the result that a

  hole is left in the Symbolic order. To speak of a hole in the Symbolic order is

  not to say that the psychotic does not have an unconscious: on the contrary, in

Psychosis 'the unconscious is present but not functioning' (S3, 208). The

psychotic structure thus results from a certain malfunction of the Oedipus

complex, a lack in the paternal function; more specifically, in Psychosis the

paternal function is reduced to the image of the father (the Symbolic is reduced

  to the Imaginary).

      In Lacanian psychoanalysis it is important to distinguish between Psychosis,

   which is a clinical structure, and psychotic phenomena such aS DELUSIONS and

  HALLUCINATIONS. Two conditions are required for psychotic phenomena to

  emerge: the subject must have a psychotic structure, and the Name-of-the-

  Father must be 'called into Symbolic opposition to the subject' (E, 217). In the

  absence of the first condition, no confrontation with the paternal signifier will

  ever lead to psychotic phenomena; a neurotic can never 'become psychotic'

   (see S3, 15). In the absence of the second condition, the psychotic structure

   will remain latent. It is thus conceivable that a subject may have a psychotic

  structure and yet never develop Delusions or experience hallucinations. When

   both conditions    are fulfilled, the Psychosis is 'triggered off', the latent

Psychosis becomes manifest in hallucinations and/or Delusions.

      Lacan bases his arguments on a detailed reading of the Schreber case (Freud,

   1911c). Daniel Paul Schreber was an Appeal Court judge in Dresden who

   wrote  an account of his paranoid Delusions;         an analysis of these writings

  constitutes Freud's most important contribution to the study of Psychosis.

   Lacan argues that Schreber's Psychosis was triggered off by both his failure

   to produce a child and his election to an important position in the judiciary;

   both of these experiences confronted him with the question of paternity in the

   Real, and thus called the Name-of-the-Father into Symbolic opposition with the

subject.

      In the 1970s Lacan reformulates his approach to Psychosis around the notion

   of the BORROMEAN KNOT. The three rings in the knot represent the three orders:

   the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. While in neurosis these three rings

   are linked together in a particular way, in Psychosis they become disentangled.

   This psychotic dissociation may sometimes however be avoided by a sympto-

   matic formation which acts as a fourth ring holding the other three together

   (see SINTHOME).

      Lacan follows Freud in arguing that while Psychosis is of great interest for

However, from 1950 on, there is a gradual but constant tendency to

dissociate psychoanalysis from psychology. Lacan begins by arguing that

psychology is confined to an understanding of animal psychology (ethol-

ogy): 'The psychological is, if we try to grasp it as firmly as possible, the

ethological, that is the whole of the biological individual's behaviour in

relation to his natural environment' (S3, 7). This is not to say that it cannot

say anything about human beings, for humans are also animals, but that it

 cannot say anything about that which is uniquely human (although at one point

Lacan does state that the theory of the ego and of narcissism 'extend' modern

ethological research; Ec, 472). Thus psychology is reduced to general laws of

behaviour which apply to all animals, including human beings; Lacan rejects

'the doctrine of a discontinuity between animal psychology and human

psychology which is far away from our thought' (Ec, 484). However, Lacan

vigorously rejects the behaviourist theory according to which the same general

laws of behaviour are sufficient to explain all human psychic phenomena. Only

psychoanalysis, which uncovers the linguistic basis of human subjectivity, is

adequate to explain those psychic phenomena which are specifically human.

     In the 1960s the distance between psychoanalysis and psychology is empha-

sised further in Lacan's work. Lacan argues that psychology is essentially a

tool of 'technocratic exploitation' (Ec, 851; see Ec, 832), and that it is

dominated by the illusions of wholeness and synthesiS, NATURE and instinct,

autonomy and self-consciousness (Ec, 832). Psychoanalysis, on the other hand,

subverts these illusions cherished by psychology, and in this sense 'the

Freudian enunciation has nothing to do with psychology' (Sl7, 144). For

example the most cherished illusion of psychology is 'the unity of the

subject' (E, 294), and psychoanalysis subverts this notion by demonstrating

that the subject is irremediably split or 'barred'.