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"[[psychosis]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[psychose]]'')
==Sigmund Freud==
==Jacques Lacan==
[[Lacan]]'s interest in [[psychosis]] predates his nterest in [[psychoanalysis]].
Indeed it was his doctoral research, which concerned a psychotic woman whom [[Lacan]] calls [[Aimée]] that first led [[Lacan]] to [[psychoanalytic theory]].<ref>{{L}} p.1932.</ref>
It is often remarked that [[Lacan]]'s debt to this [[patient]] is reminiscent of [[Freud]]'s debt to his first [[neurotic]] [[patient]]'s (who were also [[female]]).
In other words, whereas [[Freud]]'s first approach to the [[unconscious]] sis by way of [[neurosis]], [[Lacan]]'s tortured and at times almsot incomprehensible style of writing and speaking to the [[discourse]] of [[psychotic]] [[patient]]s.
Whatever one makes of such comparisons, it is clear that [[Lacan]]'s discussions of [[psychosis]] are among the most significant and original aspects of his work.
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[[Lacan]]'s most detailed discussion of [[psychosis]] appears in his [[seminar]] of 1955-6, entitled simply ''[[Seminar III|The Psychoses]]''.
It is here that he expounds what come to be the main tents of the [[Lacan]]ian approach to [[madness]].
[[Psychosis]] is defined as one of the three [[clinical structure]]s, one of hwihc is defined by the operation of [[foreclosure]].
In this operation, the [[Name-of-the-Father]] is not integrated in the [[symbolic order|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."<ref>{{S3}} p.208</ref>
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 funciton is reduced to the [[image]] of the [[father]] (the [[symbolic]] is reduced to the [[imaginary]]).
