Lacan On Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t

287 Pages·2015·2.471 MB·English

by  Patricia Gherovici, Manya Steinkoler

LACAN ON MADNESS
This new collection of essays by distinguished international scholars and clinicians
will revolutionize your understanding of madness. Essential for those on both
sides of the couch eager to make sense of the plethora of theories about madness
available today, Lacan on Madness: Madness, yes you can’t provides compelling
and original perspectives following the work of Jacques Lacan.
Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler suggest new ways of working with
phenomena often considered impermeable to clinical intervention or discarded as
meaningless. This book offers a fresh view on a wide variety of manifestations
and presentations of madness, featuring clinical case studies, new theoretical
developments in psychosis, and critical appraisal of artistic expressions of insanity.
Lacan on Madness uncovers the logics of insanity while opening new
possibilities of treatment and cure. Intervening in current debates about normalcy
and pathology, causation and prognosis, the authors propose effective modalities
of treatment, and challenge popular ideas of what constitutes a cure by offering
a reassessment of the positive and creative potential of madness. Gherovici
and Steinkoler’s book makes Lacanian ideas accessible by showing how they are
both clinically and critically useful. It is invaluable reading for psychoanalysts,
clinicians, academics, graduate students, and lay persons.
Patricia Gheroviciis a psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor. Her books include
The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Other Press, 2003) winner of the Gradiva Award and
the Boyer Prize, and Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria
to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (Routledge, 2010).
Manya Steinkoler is a psychoanalyst in formation at Après-Coup in New York
and a professor in the Department of English at Borough of Manhattan Community
College.
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LACAN
ON MADNESS
Madness, yes you can’t
Edited by Patricia Gherovici and
Manya Steinkoler
First published 2015
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Patricia Gherovici & Manya Steinkoler
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lacan on madness: madness, yes you can’t / edited by Patricia Gherovici
& Manya Steinkoler.
pages cm
1. Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981. 2. Mental illness. 3. Psychoses.
I. Gherovici, Patricia. II. Steinkoler, Manya.
BF109.L28L3176 2015
362.2—dc23
2014025556
ISBN: 978-0-415-73615-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-73616-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74275-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler
PART 1
Madness manifest: encountering madness 17
1 The case of the baby diaper man 19
ROLF FLOR
2 Ilse or the law of the mother 33
GENEVIÈVE MOREL
3 From psychotic illness to psychotic existence: on re-inventing
the institution 47
GUY DANA
4 On the suicide bomber: anatomy of a political fantasy 56
RICHARD BOOTHBY
5 Today’s madness does not make sense 68
PAUL VERHAEGHE
PART II
The method in madness: thinking psychosis 83
6 “You cannot choose to go crazy” 85
NESTOR BRAUNSTEIN
7 Treatment of the psychoses and contemporary psychoanalysis 99
JEAN-CLAUDE MALEVAL
v
CONTENTS
8 Psychotic transference 112
JEAN ALLOUCH
9 The specificity of manic-depressive psychosis 127
DARIAN LEADER
10 Melancholia and the unabandoned object 139
RUSSELL GRIGG
11 Madness, subjectivity, and the mirror stage: Lacan and
Merleau-Ponty 159
JASPER FEYAERTS AND STIJN VANHEULE
12 Narcissistic neurosis and non-sexual trauma 173
HECTOR YANKELEVICH
13 She’s raving mad: the hysteric, the woman, and the
psychoanalyst 187
CLAUDE-NÖELE PICKMANN
PART III
Madness and creation: environs of the hole 203
14 The openego: Woolf, Joyce and the “mad” subject 205
JULIET FLOWER MACCANNELL
15 Normality and segregation in Primo Levi’s Sleeping Beauty
in the Fridge 219
PAOLA MIELI
16 Spell it wrong to read it right: Crashaw, psychosis, and
Baroque poetics 234
STEPHEN W. WHITWORTH
17 Madness or mimesis: narrative impasse in the novels of
Samuel Beckett 245
OLGA COX CAMERON
18 Reading mayhem: schizophrenic writing and the engine
of madness 254
MANYA STEINKOLER
Index 268
vi
NOTES ON
CONTRIBUTORS
Jean Allouchis one of the founders and directors of the review Littoral and the
École lacanienne de psychanalyse (Paris). His study of Lacan’s patient,
Marguerite, ou L’Aimée de Lacan (1990/1994) is known as a masterpiece of
scholarly research. Allouch has introduced significant feminist, gay, lesbian,
and queer theory works to a French audience. Author of over twenty books,
including Lettre pour lettre(1984), Érotique du deuil au temps de la mort sèche
(1995/1997), Le sexe du maître(2001), L’amour Lacan, (2009), his most recent
work is the trilogy L’Ingérence divine: Prisonniers du grand Autre (2012),
Schreber théologien(2013), and Une femme sans au-delà(2014).
Richard Boothbyis Professor in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University
Maryland. His research has focused on the intersection of psychoanalytic
theory and contemporary continental philosophy. He is author of Death and
Desire: Psychoanalytic Theory in Lacan’s Return to Freud (1991), Freud as
Philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan(2001) and Sex on the Couch: What
Freud Still Has to Teach Us about Sex and Gender (2005).
Nestor Braunstein is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose work has been
paramount in the reception of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Mexico and Latin
America. Recent books include Por el camino de Freud (2001), Ficcionario
de Psicoanálisis (2001), Depuis Freud, Après Lacan. Déconstruction dans la
psychanalyse(2008), Memoria y espanto o el recuerdo de infancia(2008), La
memoria, la inventora(2008), Memory and Dread: or the Memory of Childhood
(2010), El inconsciente, la técnica y el discurso capitalista (2012). His best-
known work, Goce (Jouissance: A Lacanian Concept, 1990, 2006) has been
translated into many languages. Other books include Clasificar en psiquiatría,
published simultaneously in México, Madrid, and Buenos Aires, and a
volume co-edited with Betty Fuks and Carina Basualdo published in French,
Spanish and Portuguese: A cien años de Tótem y Tabú 1913–2013 (2013) and
Le malaise dans la technique. L’inconscient, la technique et le discours
capitaliste (2014).
Olga Cox Cameron has been a practicing psychoanalyst in Dublin for the past
twenty-five years. She lectures in psychoanalytic theory and in psychoanalysis
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
and literature at St. Vincent’s University Hospital and has published numerous
articles on these topics in national and international journals. She is on the
editorial board of Lacunae, The Irish Journal of Psychoanalysisand she is the
founder of the Irish Psychoanalytic Film Festival.
Guy Dana is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Paris and clinical director of
the psychiatric hospital and treatment facilities at Longjumeau, part of the
Bartélémy Durand Administration (France). Past president of the Cercle
Freudien, he has authored numerous articles, participated in radio and television
programs about his innovative psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients.
In Quelle politique pour la folie? Le suspense de Freud (2010) he describes
the theoretical and practical aspects of the treatment he has put into place.
Le hasard, les mots et la psychanalysewill appear in 2015. Involved in conflict
resolution in the Middle East, he organized a meeting for psychoanalysts,
including Israeli and Palestinian colleagues, at the French Senate (2003).
Jasper Feyaerts (Msc Psychology) is a PhD student in the Department of
Psychoanalysis at Ghent University. He specializes in the philosophical cross-
reading and critical reappraisal of psychoanalytic and phenomenological
perspectives on subjectivity and modern science, with attention to the work of
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Lacan.
Rolf Floris a psychoanalyst in private practice in Boston. He is co-curator of the
Boston Lacan Study Group and the clinical director of the Eliot Community
Human Services in Lynn, Massachusetts. He is a faculty member of the
Massachussetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Patricia Gheroviciis a psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, co-founder and curator
of Philadelphia Lacan Group (Philadelphia) and member of Après-Coup (New
York). Her books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (2003), winner of the
Gradiva Award and the Boyer Prize, and Please Select Your Gender: From the
Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism(2010). Recent
contributions include The Literary Lacan: From Literature to ‘Lituraterre’ and
Beyond (2013) and A Concise Companion to Psychoanalysis, Literature and
Culture(2014). Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change: Lacanian Approaches to
Sexual and Social Difference is forthcoming.
Russell Griggpractices psychoanalysis in Melbourne and teaches philosophy at
Deakin University. He has been a major influence in introducing Lacanian
psychoanalysis in Australia. A member of the École de la cause freudienne
(Paris) and the Lacan Circle of Melbourne (Melbourne), he has been closely
involved in the translation of Lacan into English, having translated Lacan’s
Seminar III The Psychosesand Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
and collaborated with Bruce Fink on the translation of Écrits. His books
include Female Sexuality(1999), Lacan, Language and Philosophy (2009), and
with Justin Clemens, Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis:
viii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Reading Seminar XVII (2006). He has published on questions of logic,
language, and ethics, as well as on clinical issues concerning psychosis and
neurosis.
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practicing in London. Founding member of
the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, he is President of The College
of Psychoanalysts-UK and Visiting Professor at the School of Human and Life
Sciences, Roehampton University. He is the author of many essays on art and
a frequent contributor to The Guardian. His books include Why Do Women
Write More Letters than They Post? (1986), Promises Lovers Make When It
Gets Late(1997), Freud’s Footnotes(2000), Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art
Stops Us from Seeing (2002), Why Do people Get Ill? (with David Corfield,
2007), The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression(2008), What
Is Madness?(2011), and Strictly Bipolar(2013).
Juliet Flower MacCannell is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and
English at UC Irvine. She is currently co-chair of the California Psychoanalytic
Circle and co-editor of (a): the journal of culture and the unconscious. An
Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, University of London,
she is the author of several books on psychoanalysis and philosophy in a social
and political frame, including Figuring Lacan: Criticism & the Cultural
Unconscious(1986; reissued by Routledge, 2014), The Regime of the Brother:
After the Patriarchy(1991), TheHysteric’s Guide to the Future Female Subject
(2000), and over ninety articles. Her work has been translated into Spanish,
German, Slovenian and French. She is also an artist.
Jean-Claude Maleval is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and professor of clinical
psychology at Rennes University, France. He is a Member of École de la cause
freudienne and World Association of Psychoanalysis. His voluminous scholarly
publications on schizophrenia, paranoid psychosis, and autism are considered
to be at the cutting edge of research and theory in the field. His books have
become standard for studying psychosis in a psychoanalytic framework. They
include Folies hystériques et psychoses dissociatives(1981, 1985, 1991, 2007),
Logique du délire(1997, 2011), La forclusion du Nom-du-Père (2000), L’autiste
et sa voix (2009), Etonnantes mystifications de la psychothérapie autoritaire
(2012).
Paola Mieli is a psychoanalyst in New York City. Instrumental in bringing a
Lacanian clinical presence to the US, Dr Mieli is the founder and president of
Après-Coup Psychoanalytic Association and member of Le Cercle Freudien
(Paris), Insistance (Paris), and The European Federation of Psychoanalysis
(Strasbourg). She has published numerous articles on psychoanalysis and
culture in Europe and America. A correspondent editor of the psychoanalytic
journal Che Vuoi(Paris) and a contributing editor of the journal Insistance. Art,
psychanalyse et politique(Paris), she teaches in the Department of Photography
and Related Media of The School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her books
ix