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[[Psychosis]] (psychose)
The term [[Psychosis]] arose in psychiatry in the
nineteenth century as a way of designating mental illness in general. During
Freud's life, a basic distinction between [[Psychosis]] and NEUROSIs came to be
generally accepted, according to which [[Psychosis]] designated extreme forms of
mental illness and neurosis denoted less serious disorders. This basic distinc-
tion between neurosis and [[Psychosis]] was taken up and developed by Freud
himself in several papers (e.g. Freud, 1924b and 1924e).
Lacan's interest in [[Psychosis]] predates his interest in psychoanalysis. Indeed
it was his doctoral research, which concerned a psychotic [[Woman]] whom Lacan
calls 'AimÈe', that first led Lacan to psychoanalytic theory (see Lacan, 1932).
It has often been remarked that Lacan's debt to this patient is reminiscent of
Freud's debt to his first neurotic patients (who were also female). In other
words, whereas Freud's first approach to the unconscious is by way of
neurosis, Lacan's first approach is via [[Psychosis]]. It has also been common
to compare Lacan's tortured and at times almost incomprehensible style of
writing and speaking to the discourse of psychotic patients. Whatever one
are stabilized in the delusional metaphor' (E, 217). Another way of describing
this is as 'a relationship between the subject and the signifier in its most formal
dimension, in its dimension as a pure signifier' (S3, 250). This relationship of
the subject to the signifier in its purely formal aspect constitutes 'the nucleus of
[[Psychosis]]' (S3, 250). 'If the neurotic inhabits language, the psychotic is
inhabited, possessed, by language' (S3, 250).
Of all the various forms of [[Psychosis]], it iS [[Paranoia]] that most interests
Lacan, while schizophrenia and manic-depressive [[Psychosis]] are rarely dis-
cussed (see S3, 3-4). Lacan follows Freud in maintaining a structural distinc-
tion between paranoia and schizophrenia.
== def ==
A mental condition whereby the patient completely loses touch with reality. Freud originally distinguished between neurosis and psychosis in the following way: “in neurosis the ego suppresses part of the id out of allegiance to reality, whereas in psychosis it lets itself be carried away by the id and detached from a part of reality” (5.202).
