1st Edition

The Psychoses The Seminar of Jacques Lacan

Edited By Jacques-Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan Copyright 1993
    352 Pages
    by Routledge

    352 Pages
    by Routledge

    During the third year of his famous seminar, Jacques Lacan gives a concise definition of psychoanalysis: 'Psychoanalysis should be the science of language inhabited by the subject. From the Freudian point of view man is the subject captured and tortured by language.' Since psychosis is a special but emblematic case of language entrapment, Lacan devotes much of this year to grappling with distinctions between the neuroses and the psychoses. As he compared the two, relationships, symmetries, and contrasts emerge that enable him to erect a structure for psychosis.
    Freud's famous case of Daniel Paul Schreber is central to Lacan's analysis. In demonstrating the many ways that the psychotic is `inhabited, possessed by language', Lacan draws upon Schreber's own account of his psychosis and upon Freud's notes on this 'case of paranoia'. The analysis of language is both fascinating and enlightening.

    Translator's note Acknowledgements Abbreviations Part I Introduction to the Question of the Psychoses 1. Introduction to the question of the psychoses 2. The meaning of delusion 3. The Other and psychosis 4. "I've just been to the butcher's" Part II Thematics and Structure of the Psychotic Phenomenon 5. On a god who does not deceive and one who does 6. The psychotic phenomenon and its mechanism 7. THe imaginary dissolution 8. The symbolic sentence 9. On nonsense and the structure of God 10. On the signifier in the real and the bellowing-miracle 11. On the rejection of a primordial signifier Part III On the Signifier and the Signified 12. The hysteric's question 13. The hysteric's question (II)_: ^`What is a woman? 14. The signifier, as such, signifies nothing 15. On primordial signifiers and the lack of one 16. Secretaries to the insane 17. Metaphor and metonymy (I) ``His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful'' 18. Metaphor and metonymy (II) Signifying articulation and transference of the signified 19. An address: Freud in the century Part IV The Environs of the Hole 20. The appeal, the allusion 21. The quilting point 22. ``Thou art the one who wilt follow me'' 23. The highway and the signifier being a father 24. ``Thou art'' 25. The phallus and the meteor Bibliography

    Biography

    Jacques Lacan, Jacques-Alain Miller