No other post-Freudian theorist has taken a more radical, almost categorical, view of psychosis than Jacques Lacan. His early experience of psychiatric training under Clérambault and at the Sainte-Anne Hospital had a profound impact on his reading of Freud. Lacan’s theories of psychosis have led to innovations around technique and the analytic setting that are little known in the United States. If psychosis is not on a spectrum with neurosis as a Kleinian, for example, might view it, then what implications does this have for thinking about patients “on the verge?” Where and how might we locate the question of madness in classical analysis using Lacanian theory and technique? Join us for this two-part series where we will discuss psychotic states, from untriggered psychosis, to breakdown and addiction, to what Lacan called psychosis proper, and the extreme mechanisms that set the stage for psychotic breaks, delusion, and paranoia.
For a better sense of Lacanian views of psychosis you might be interested in the following interview with psychoanalyst Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz (UK) by Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler (also published in Division Review): http://www.the-site.org.uk/members-news/patricia-gherovici-manya-steinkoler-interview-dorothee-bonnigal-katz/