Revisiting the Body in the Onset of Psychosis

Abstract

The vignettes in Chapter 2 provided clinical examples to demonstrate the complexity of psychotic onset and triggering events. In these examples, onset and subsequent triggering are connected to a diverse array of events, including the subject’s experience of sexuality, the Other’s desire and body jouissance. To examine cases such as these, theorists draw on Lacan’s classical theory of the onset of psychosis characterised by the subject’s encounter with the hole in the Other, wrought by foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father. However, a new theory has been put forth, which claims that the onset of psychosis can occur without the subject’s link to the paternal function being called into question. Thus, in certain cases, another mechanism may be linked to the onset of psychosis: disturbances to the phallic function on the imaginary plane (Castanet and De Georges, 2008; Morel, 2008). These theorists argue that the onset of psychosis needs to be broadened to include events associated with the failure of the phallic function to regulate puissance (Castanet and De Georges, 2008; Gault, 2004; Morel, 2008; Porcheret, 2008). Consequently, there may be at least two separate mechanisms underlying the onset of psychosis: through disturbances to the phallic function and the imaginary, and via the paternal function and the symbolic order. Theorists also contend that specific psychotic phenomena will emerge from these discrete pathways; this idea is pertinent to ordinary psychosis, as it may elucidate how the onset of psychosis remains localised to the body without the onset of hallucinations and other language disturbances.KeywordsTrigger EventLanguage DisturbanceDiagnostic ImpressionPaternal FunctionImaginary PlaneThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.