Competing Lacanian Views of Psychosis and the Body

Abstract

The investigation of body phenomena in ordinary psychosis raises important questions about the mechanisms of symptom formation in psychosis. As symptom construction is a crucial factor for the stabilisation of psychotic structure in the Lacanian field, theorising how this occurs is an imperative clinical task. Clinicians affirm that there are many instances of psychosis in which paranoid delusions or imaginary identifications do not play a central role in the stabilisation of psychic structure. Although these cases provide important theoretical inroads into the understanding of stabilisation in psychosis, other unknown mechanisms of symptom formation must be postulated. Theorists (Gault, 2008; Porcheret et al., 2008) have identified unusual and mild body phenomena in psychosis as an opportunity to propound new forms of stabilisation. Furthermore, even though the theory of ‘neo-conversions’ is in nascent form, it is clear that for certain individuals body phenomena engender a successful, albeit provisional, symptom formation; that is, certain body phenomena that localise jouissance in the signifier function to stabilise psychotic structure. Thus far, I have argued that body phenomena in certain cases of ordinary psychosis constitute a symptom, which appears to have a stabilising function, particularly after the onset of psychosis.