17 .The Seminar. Book III,pp.33‒34.
How does the psychotic produce signification or signified if the signifier of signifiers is
foreclosed? I believe it is not sufficient to argue that, in psychosis, “S2s have relations
amongst themselves” (B. Fink, The Lacanian Subject[Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995 ], p. 75 ). If in psychosis the relations between the S2s go beyond the dimension of
the Real-of-language (the letter), if the psychosis is often latent, and the subject can thus
manage to produce signification, he can do so only by means of a certain number of sig-
nifiers which both transcend the S2s and do not achieve the status of a proper S1. This
would explain Lacan’s statement according to which “for a human being to be called
‘normal’” he has to acquire “a minimal number” of quilting points (The Seminar Book III,
pp.268‒269; emphasis added). In other words, the psychotic is notwithout quilting
points.... The psychotic forecloses the primordial (and qualitatively more important)
quilting point produced by the paternal metaphor, but he nevertheless has (a quantita-
tively insufficient number of ) other quilting points which, by definition, cannot be re-
duced to the status of S2; if this were not the case, he would simply be “completely crazy,”
he would not speak to us in our language....
In Seminar III, Lacan literally says that “what is not symbolized returns in the real” (The
Seminar. Book III,p. 86 ), and that “the object of a Verwerfung[foreclusion] reappear[s] in the
real” (ibid., p.19 0).
Ibid., p. 113.
M. Recalcati, “Follia e struttura in Jacques Lacan,” in aut aut,285‒286(May-August 1998 ),
p. 151.
In psychosis, “the unconscious is present but not functioning” (The Seminar. Book III,
p. 143 ).
Ibid., p. 250.
“Does the patient speak? If we did not distinguish language and speech, it’s true, he
speaks, but he speaks like those sophisticated dolls that open and close their eyes, drink
liquid, etc.” (ibid., p. 34 ).
Ibid., p. 250.
Ibid., p. 112. The unconscious is always “outside” but, in being outside, it is latent for
neurotics, overt for psychotics.
I believe this is precisely the point which Grigg fails to emphasize in his otherwise ex-
cellent article on Lacan’s evolving notion of psychosis (see R. Grigg, “From the Mecha-
nism of Psychosis to the Universal Condition of the Symptom: On Foreclosure,” in Key
Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis,ed. D. Nobus [London: Rebus Press, 1998 ], especially
pp.53‒54, 56 ). Grigg correctly emphasizes that the Real returns in reality,and that what
returns in reality are nothing but signifiers; on the other hand, he does not specify that
the Real-of-language that returns corresponds to the universal(nonsymbolized) Symbolic,
and thus risks confusing the Real-of-language with the primordial Real.
I will henceforth often use the phrase “universal Name-of-the-Father” to designate this
universal level of the Law as such. This obviously does not exclude the possibility that the
Name-of-the-Father also stands for the universal Law at the individuallevel of the subject’s
individual entrance into the Symbolic.