Subjectivity and Otherness A Philosophical Reading of Lacan

Lacan is convinced that the psychotic’s psychic life is fully determined by sig-
nifiers. He also seems to believe that the psychotic can produce imaginary signi-
fications—as a matter of fact, a psychosis is often latent. Conversely, delusions
are thought to be “partial” even in the most serious cases.^15 What the psychotic
cannot do—lacking the Name-of-the-Father, and consequently the Master-
Signifier (S1)—is order the significations he produces in a consistent discourse.
In other words, the psychotic’s psychic life does not merely consist of an endless
metonymic slide from signifier to signifier: metaphoric processes are also pos-
sible; Lacan indeed speaks of “delusional metaphors” in which “signifier and
signified are [temporarily] stabilised.”^16 There is a certain degree of symbolic ar-
ticulation thanks to which various signifying chains overlap and signification is
produced—“these patients speak to us in the same language as ourselves”^17 —
yet these chains are not more broadly ordered by the signifier of signifiers.^18
The most important conclusion to be drawn here is that, however serious and
persistent a delusion is, the psychotic is never confined to a mythical domain be-
yond language, a pure, primordial Real. To avoid such a frequent misunderstand-
ing, it is necessary carefully to reassess one of Lacan’s most famous formulations
about psychosis; I take “what is foreclosed from the Symbolic returns in the Real”^19
to mean primarily: if the Name-of-the-Father as external guarantor of the Sym-
bolic is foreclosed, then delusions may arise in which everyday reality turns into
the Real-of-language.In psychotic delusions, the ordinary perception of external real-
ity—which, in order to function properly, necessitates a symbolic articulation
ultimately rooted in the Name-of-the-Father—is indeed replaced by phenomena
such as auditory hallucinations whose “verbal” nature is a matter of fact. The
unconscious as Real-of-language—as unmediated, unsymbolized letter—appears
in reality. As I have already observed in Chapter 2 , in these instances the uncon-
scious is “out in the open”:^20 for the same reason, given that we are dealing with
an “unconscious without a subject,”^21 there is, strictly speaking, no more uncon-
scious, and subjectivity collapses due to a lack of distinction between the ego and
the unconscious.^22

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S2

S1

S

Real

Graph 4.2