Psychosis
Psychosis is one of the three main diagnostical categories within the Lacanian system, the other two being neurosis and perversion. Psychosis is based on the mechanism of Verwerfung (foreclosure). Lacanian diagnosis is a diagnosis in relation to the "signifier" (Signifier being the basic unit of language), in relation to "language". Foreclosure (Verwerfung) is a mechanism on which psychotic structure is based, while the two other structures neurosis and perversion are based on repression and disavowal. Foreclosure is a method through which the psyche receives information and the law, a law which comes as language and as the prohibition. By "Foreclosing" the law, the psyche rejects the law, in Lacanian terms "The Name of the Father" or "Paternal metaphor". If the paternal metaphor has been foreclosed (knowledge of the law was denied entrance), the unconscious is not inscribed and the subject is stuck within the psychotic structure. Psychotic structure is not inscribed in the field of the father, in the field of language. Contrary to neurotic structure, a psychotic structure is a consequence of rejection of the law and the inscription of the unconscious, repression is non-operative within psychosis. Foreclosure as a mechanism in itself is like closing the doors in order to deny entrance or shielding yourself with a shield in order to avoid damage from the attacker. It is the attack of the law as language, if the door has been closed, the law cannot enter because it is too late. A worldly example that could present an understanding of psychosis a bit differently, imagine: it's a beautiful morning, winter, year 1995, and you are having a busy day in the snowy city centre of London. You have a couple of meetings aligned in the afternoon and after the meetings are finished, you want to buy a couple of gifts because Christmas is coming. On your way to the first meeting, by accident, you bump with your shoulder into the most beautiful woman in the world. Because of the impact, after you bumped into her, she dropped her purse. Of course, being a gentleman, you picked her purse off the floor and kindly said "I am sorry" while passing it on to her. At that moment of passage, your gaze meets her gaze, and you observe her smile and freckles on her face, her perfume takes your breath away. You are in love, my friend. At that particular moment of your beautiful fantasmatic realisation of how much she attracts you, within that moment, you create a fantasy which includes both of you laughing together next to the Christmas tree while smooth jazz is playing in the background. You two already have a future together, but that future is still only in your fantasy. You kindly asked her "What is her name?" and then said that "you would like to meet her again, just avoiding bumps this time, in different circumstances". She kindly smiled at you and without telling her name to you, she asked you to meet her at the new cocktail bar in town at 9 PM. Of course, you have agreed to meet her because your psychic world exploded with joy after hearing her proposition. You replied by saying "It would be my pleasure to meet you tonight". After hearing your answer, she smiled, looked straight into your eyes and said "I am looking forward to it" and walked away without telling you her name and without giving you a chance to ask for her mobile number. A mysterious beautiful woman with freckles disappeared in the crowd. Everything happened within seconds, which sparked new life into you and within seconds, once again, you were back in your everyday reality. But, you got back into the old daily reality with a new fantasy which included a beautiful freckled woman who will be your companion over Christmas and maybe even forever?! Your last meeting took longer than expected, in order to meet your dream girl, you had to come up with a reason to finish the meeting earlier. And of course, in the name of "love at first sight", you, have managed to find a reason and finished your meeting as early as possible but later than expected. With a heartbeat of a pygmy shrew at 1,200 bpm and the amount of adrenaline within you, that would have been enough to resuscitate 3 hospitals full of patients, you have managed to arrive at the discussed location... But, 30 minutes late.. at 09:30 PM. At your arrival, you were told by the 3 doormen with highly Eastern European accents that the doors are "closed", "no entry after 9 PM".
The moral of the story - If you had entered the building before 9 PM, there would have been a possibility for your fantasy to actualize in reality. A beautiful symbolic story might have developed, Christmas together, jazz in the background, her perfume taking your breath away. But, because you were late, this scenario will stay "within the imaginary", it will stay within your imagination, in your fantasy, but will not be actualized in reality, it will not develop within the symbolic structure of reality as a rational, real event. This event (your possible future with miss freckles) will be closed within the "imaginary dimension" as an imaginary event, not as the rational lively scenario, where you two might have created the future together. Foreclosing "paternal metaphor" is a similar thing, "The Name of The Father" was denied entrance because it arrived too late or did not know how to knock. Maybe, if you had managed to explain the situation to the Eastern European doorman, they might have allowed you to enter the building. Within the story of the beautiful mysterious freckled woman, what you have left with is an imaginary creation of her, without knowing her character, her family history, her sense of humour, her favourite topics that she likes to talk about, without knowing her favourite food or favourite colour, without knowing her favourite song or her shoe size. Your knowledge of her has no rational anchor within the symbolic reality, the only things that you can express about her are the things that you can imagine about her, without knowing her at all. The law as language was not anchored within the fundamental structures of the psyche (unconscious). The entrance of the law was foreclosed, the law arrived either too late, as you did, by arriving at the cocktail bar 30 minutes late, or the law did not show up at all. Because you don't have her mobile number and don't know her name, because it is 1995 (social media is not here for you), your chances of finding her are equal to zero. The paternal metaphor works in the same way, that is why Lacan was so rigid in his explanations of the psychotic structure (Once a psychotic, always a psychotic). Within this story of the cocktail bar and the freckled beauty, the cocktail bar represents the child's psyche, you represent the law and the Eastern European doorman represents the mechanism of foreclosure. If the law had been allowed entrance, it would have been repressed within the psyche and there would have been a possibility in the future for you two to create a relationship. Psychoanalytically speaking, the operationality of the law is inscribed at an early age through the mechanism of repression because of which the subjective structure becomes neurotic. Conversely, because of the foreclosure of the law, the structure of subjectivity becomes psychotic. Another simple example could be a traffic light and the zebra crossing. We all know that during a period when the red light is shining, crossing the street is prohibited. A universal symbolic rule that is known to everyone. This knowing of the rule without even thinking about it is what represents neurotic structure, the fact that the prohibition of crossing the street exists is repressed within the neurotic structure of the psyche and it operates without questions. Conversely, a psychotic structure would portray a situation where such rules don't exist, where the symbolic laws do not operate within the psyche. The proposition here would not be that psychotically structured subjects do not know the fact that you shouldn't cross the street during the red light. However, it would suggest that the psychotic structure would relate to the signification of prohibition differently. The differentiation point between the structures (Neurosis, Psychosis, Perversion) is the mechanism through which the subject relates to the law.
Let's look at some Lacanian literature to investigate the intricacies of psychosis further. In his book "A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis Theory and Technique" in chapter 7 on Psychosis Bruce Fink describes this structure profoundly clearly, he writes "The paternal function is not the function played by the individual's father, regardless of his particular style and personality, the role he plays in the family circle, and so on. A flesh-and-blood father does not immediately and automatically fulfil the paternal function, nor does the absence of a real, live father in any way automatically ensure the nonexistence of the paternal function. This function may be fulfilled despite the early death or disappearance of the father due to war or divorce; it may be fulfilled in other ways as well " (Fink, 1997, p. 75). We can see that this is not the talk on biology, language is neither biological nor physical and metaphor is situated within the symbolic dimension where it can operate without the biological father in question being present. Further Fink writes:
"The paternal function is a symbolic function, and can be just as effective when the father is temporarily absent as when he is present. Mothers appeal to the father as judge and castigator when they say to their children, "You'll be punished for that when your father gets home!" But they appeal to the father as a more abstract function when they ask a child to consider what its father would do or say if he found out that the child had done such and such. They appeal, in such cases, to the father as a name, a word or a signifier associated with certain ideas. Consider the case of a woman whose husband has died; she can keep him alive in her children's minds by asking them, "What would your father have thought about that? or by saying, "Your father wouldn't have liked that one bit". It is above all in such cases that we see the functioning of the father as part of speech - that is, as an element in mother's discourse." (Fink, 1997, p. 80).
Fink perfectly describes the function of the "symbolic father", a father that is alive in the child's mind as a metaphor which holds the structure of prohibition within the psyche. At this point psychoanalysis itself becomes a common sense, it is not some secret discourse that could only be understood by French intellectuals, quite the contrary, it is something that every one of us can understand. The father's function is symbolic, it is the instigation of the law. Further, Bruce Fink writes "Foreclosure involves the radical rejection of a particular element from the symbolic order (that is, from language), and not just any element: it involves the element that in some sense grounds or anchors the symbolic order as a whole" (Fink, 1997, p. 79). The function of the father in the Lacanian psychoanalytic system is the grounding mechanism, it is what holds the bearings of the psyche. Fink describes the father's function within the family thus "For our purposes here, let it suffice to say that the father who embodies the paternal function in a nuclear family generally comes between mother and child, stopping the child from beings drawn altogether to or into the mother and stopping the mother from engulfing her child" (Fink, 1997, p. 80). Engulfing the child, in this case, would mean "psychosis", psychoanalytically understood, psychosis, is a non-seperation from the mother. Jacques Lacan gave an example of a crocodile, which holds his mouth open and psychosis is the closure of that mouth, as if the child is eaten by his mother. The only way to keep the crocodile's (mother's) mouth open in order to save the child from psychosis (from being eaten by the crocodile) is to put a stick in the crocodile's mouth, (so the mouth cannot close, the jaws cannot be shut) and that "stick" is "the phallus", the separator and the prohibitor, the symbolic function of the father. The psychotic breaks psychoanalytically speaking would be explained through the prism of the foreclosure. The crocodile (the mother) closed her mouth while the child was sitting in her mouth because the stick (paternal metaphor) was not placed into the mouth of the crocodile to prevent it. Psychotic breaks happen if the structure from the beginning was psychotic. Jacques Lacan used the metaphor of the "legs of the table" in order to explain the structural nature of psychosis. The neurotic structure is based on repression and because of that it is inscribed into the symbolic order of language, repression inscribes subjectivity into the order of the father. While, on the contrary, the psychotic structure is missing a leg and if a table without one leg receives pressure, it collapses. Within the neurotic structure, symbolic laws and rules are companions to the subject, it gives stability and integration because the symbolic space was probed open to the subject by the paternal metaphor through repression. Contrary to psychosis, where symbolic matters are terrifying because the paternal metaphor did not take the effect of probing the symbolic fabric in which the place for the subject would exist, because of that the table collapses. A perfect example of this is a structural difference between the neurotic and psychotic subject when becoming a father. "The father" is a symbolic position, because the father's symbolic function is represented by "the phallus", the master signifier, the signifier that signifies non-lack and power. Because a neurotic subject received the father's law and repressed it, because of that receiving a symbolic space within the symbolic order, a neurotic takes the symbolic position of becoming "a father" more easily than a psychotic would do. Within the psychotic structure, the father's law was not received by the child, the law hadn't reached the psyche, and because of that, the chance of the law to take effect was foreclosed. Because the law as "The Name of the Father" did not take effect, the symbolic space within the symbolic fabric was not prepared for the psychotic, instead of integration, the psychotic structure has a hole in the place, where the symbolic phallus should have been placed. This structural situation leads the psychotic into a dangerous situation because the symbolic mandates such as being a father, holding a stable job position, following a plan or being disciplined are received through the hole in which the phallus should have been placed. But, because of the foreclosure, the symbolic castration did not happen and the symbolic space was not probed with the phallus. The psychotic position is destabilized and the pressure of symbolic mandates breaks the table down, the table falls because one leg is missing and the fall might be filled with imaginary scenarios and paranoiac delusions.
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Symbolic castration and Psychosis
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Why does psychosis appear as a structure if the operation of the symbolic castration is missing from the equation? Let's begin with the signifier, the master is the phallus, the phallus is the master signifier because it signifies non-lack and power. The phallus is not a biological organ but a symbolic object, an object that the father does not truly have but it appears as a possession of the father in the eyes of the child because the father represents authority and is the governor of the family. The father's authority creates an illusion that the father possesses something that the child does not have, that "something" is the symbolic object "phallus". That symbolic object is the object that makes the father a signifier of power, law and authority. The phallic signifier in itself has no clear signification, there is no clear meaning of the phallus apart from the fact that it signifies authority and the law. Because of this reason, the phallus plays the role of the first signifier which comes as the third term within the family relationship. The first two points of contact are (The Mother and The Child), and the third term is (The father), but the father comes not as the "biological father", but as the first operation of signification, signification of authority and prohibition which is psychically painful for the child and that pain of seeing someone taking over mother's attention has to be repressed. The phallus is the signifier which opens the bag of all the other signifiers, the bag of all other possible signifiers is "the symbolic order". Repression is the mechanism which constructs the neurotic subjectivity of the child within that bag of all possible signifiers. The foreclosure, on the contrary, is the mechanism which closes the possibility of the child subjectivity to be created within the bag of all possible signifiers. Psychotic subjectivity is created on "the outside of the bag of all possible signifiers", that is why Jacques Lacan said that "the psychotics unconscious is on the surface" as a non-existent unconscious because the possible creation of subjectivity within the bag of all possible signifiers was prohibited. What is going on here precisely then? The neurotic subjectivity is created within the bag of all possible signifiers, within the order of the father, because of the mechanism of repression which is operational within the symbolic order and the entrance into that order is based on the first/master signifier which is the phallus. The psychotic subjectivity is created on the outside of the bag of all possible signifiers because the mechanism of foreclosure prohibited subjectivity from being constructed on the inside of the bag because the original/master signifier (the phallus) did not cause the child's psyche to repress it into the symbolic order because of the foreclosure of it. The consequence of this sequence is the fact, that psychotic subjectivity becomes the creation of "imaginary laws", instead of the "symbolic laws", symbolic laws that are gathered within the bag of all possible signifiers. The bag of all possible signifiers is the place where logic exists. It is the place, where conceptual opposition is created, such as day and night, man and woman, pleasure and pain, light and heavy, and light and darkness, because signifiers have meaning only in relation to other signifiers. A signifier "table" cannot exist on its own in the empty space, there has to be a background for meaning to appear. The table exists somewhere, for example "in space", there is a relation here, tables existence within the space of space, relationality between the signifiers is the cause of meaning here. Scientists and philosophers up until today cannot fully answer "Why something came out of nothing?", we cannot comprehend "nothing" because anything you can "comprehend" is already something and that something is something because it is in relation to something else. We are stuck, bound by the symbolic order, the symbolic order which is "the bag of all possible signifiers". Structurally psychotic subjectivity is not bound by the rules of "the bag of all possible signifiers and the logic between them" (symbolic order), psychotic subjectivity is created through the imaginary order, where the rules of logic do not apply. Psychotic phenomena such as seeing visions and hearing voices are based on the fact that the structure of psychotic subjectivity is not based on the rules of logic which govern the symbolic order, the bag of all possible signifiers. The table loses its ground when the symbolic mandates start pressurising psychotic subjectivity and the bubble pops, which opens the possibility for the invasion of all possible meanings of what is happening, meanings that are not based on the symbolic rules of logic within the bag of all possible signifiers. Because the symbolic castration did not cause repression within the structure of psychosis, the bar separating the signifier and the signified was not erected and there is no differentiation between the two. The symbolic logic of the signifier which is located within the bag of all possible signifiers is exchanged with the meaning of the signifier which is based outside of the bag of all possible signifiers. That is why psychosis as a structure is based on "invasion of meaning" because the differentiation between the signifier and the signified is not based on the logical symbolic separation between the two, the anchoring of the psychotic subjectvity is based on the signified, which is unbound from the symbolic logic of the signifier and open to interpretation.
An exemplary clinical case of psychosis, which will portray the logic behind the proposed theory in relation to hearing voices, seeing visions and the change of sexual position was used by Freud, let's look at Judge Shreber's case. Judge Daniel Paul Schreber was a German judge who became known after his memoir, "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" (Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken), published in 1903. Schreber suffered a first mental breakdown in 1884, which happened after he lost an election for the Reichstag (German Parliament). He was institutionalized for a short period of time, during which he suffered from depression, after his recovery he got back to work to his judicial duties. The second breakdown appeared after Schreber was appointed to a high judicial position in 1893, almost 10 years after the first breakdown. Paul Schreber wrote his memoirs while being institutionalised because of his severe mental breakdown, in his memoirs he described in detail the psychic phenomena of what was happening to him. In his writings, Schreber describes his transformation into a woman, losing his internal organs, his organs would disappear and reappear again in the right place just before eating a meal, he described becoming an object of a divine plan as a chosen one and his communication with God through a system of divine rays.
Interrogating Schreber’s Memoirs
In his opening letter to Professor Fleming Schreber writes thus:
"I beg you, therefore, my dear Sir - I might almost say: I
implore you - to state without reservation:
(1) Whether during my stay in your Asylum, you maintained
a hypnotic or similar contact with me in such a way that even
when separated in space, you exerted an influence on my nervous system;
(2) Whether you thus witnessed in any way communications
from voices originating elsewhere, indicating supernatural origin; finally
(3) Whether during my time in your Asylum you also received visions or vision-like impressions particularly in dreams, which dealt amongst others with the almighty power of God and human freedom of will, unmanning, loss of states of Blessedness, my relations and my friends, as well as yours, particularly Daniel Furchtegott Flechsig named in Chapter 6, and many other matters mentioned in my "Memoirs." (Schreber, 2000).
"1. On the other hand, on the basis of what I have myself experienced, I am able to give a more detailed explanation of some Christian dogmas and how such things can come about through divine miracles. Something like the conception of Jesus Christ by an Immaculate Virgin-i.e. one who never had intercourse with a man-happened in my own body. Twice at different times (while I was still in Flechsig's Asylum I had a female genital organ, although a poorly developed one, and in my body felt quickening like the first signs of life of a human embryo: by a divine miracle God's nerves corresponding to male seed had been thrown into my body; in other words fertilization had occurred. Further, I have reached a fairly clear idea of how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ may have come about; during the latter part of my stay in Flechsig's Asylum and the beginning of my stay here, I have witnessed not once but hundreds of times how human shapes were set down for a short time by divine miracles only to be dissolved again or vanish" (Schreber, 2000).
"Furthermore, one morning while still in bed (whether still half asleep or already awake I cannot remember), I had a feeling which, thinking about it later when fully awake, struck me as highly peculiar. It was the idea that it really must be rather pleasant to be a woman succumbing to intercourse. This idea was so foreign to my whole nature that I may say I would have rejected it with indignation if fully awake; from what I have experienced since I cannot exclude the possibility that some external influences were at work to implant this idea in me." (Schreber, 2000, p.46).
My comment on (Schreber, 2000, p.46):
As if Schreber would be saying that he knows that there is a hole in the symbolic order. The hole, that had to be plugged with a phallic signifier (the master signifier), but, as we know, the hole was not plugged (Foreclosure), which was the reason why Schreber was structurally psychotic. As if he was describing the inner feeling of "the hole" in the symbolic order and "being a woman succumbing to intercourse" was a literal description of it (the hole in the symbolic order) because instead of participating within the order of the phallus, even though he really tried and achieved quite a lot, in a sense of a symbolic position in society while holding a masculine position of "having it", he eventually succumbed to the feminine position of "being it".
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"The first really bad, that is to say almost sleepless nights, occurred in the last days of October or the first days of November. It was then that an extraordinary event occurred. During several nights when I could not get to sleep, a recurrent crackling noise in the wall of our bedroom became noticeable at shorter or longer intervals; time and again it woke me as I was about to go to sleep. Naturally we thought of a mouse although it was very extraordinary that a mouse should have found its way to the first floor of such a solidly built house. But having heard similar noises innumerable times since then, and still hearing them around me every day in day-time and at night, I have come to recognize them as undoubted divine miracles." (Schreber, 2000, p.47).
"I must now discuss the nature of the frequently mentioned inner voices which since then have spoken to me incessantly, and also of what in my opinion is the tendency innate in the Order of the World, according to which a human being ("a seer of spirits" ) must under certain circumstances be "unmanned" (transformed into a woman) once he has entered into indissoluble contact with divine nerves (rays)." (Schreber, 2000, p.53).
My comment on (Schreber, 2000, p.53):
In relation to Lacanian theory and the symbolic order, the phenomena of inner voices which were heard as "separate entities" talking to Schreber would suggest "The foreclosure" as the basis for the whole equation. The whole imaginary scenario was built on the fact that the signifier which would have based Schreber within the symbolic dimension was missing. "The Order of the World" mentioned by Schreber is like the field of language was seen by Schreber from afar, as an outsider who saw the symbolic order, but through an imaginary logic. Which further leads to "according to which a human being ("a seer of spirits" ) must under certain circumstances be "unmanned" (transformed into a woman) once he has entered into indissoluble contact with divine nerves (rays)." A human being, is a seer of spirits according to Schreber, when the seer of spirits (human being, probably Schreber in this case particularly) enters into indissoluble contact with the divine days, he has to be "unmanned" (transformed into a woman). The thematics of "transforming into a woman" will be appearing more and more in Schrebers writings, as if the psychotic structure is meant to flip, sooner or later, back into the original feminine position. Because, if psychosis is based on foreclosure and the foreclosure is the denial of the phallus, it presupposes the fact that the original subjective position is feminine.
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To be continued..