Psychosis

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).