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 Gherovici is 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. 2 LACAN ON MADNESS Madness, yes you can’t Edited by Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler 3 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 4 CONTENTS Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler PART 1 Madness manifest: encountering madness 1 The case of the baby diaper man ROLF FLOR 2 Ilse or the law of the mother GENEVIÈVE MOREL 3 From psychotic illness to psychotic existence: on re-inventing the institution GUY DANA 4 On the suicide bomber: anatomy of a political fantasy RICHARD BOOTHBY 5 Today’s madness does not make sense PAUL VERHAEGHE PART II The method in madness: thinking psychosis 6 “You cannot choose to go crazy” NESTOR BRAUNSTEIN 7 Treatment of the psychoses and contemporary psychoanalysis JEAN-CLAUDE MALEVAL 8 Psychotic transference JEAN ALLOUCH 9 The specificity of manic-depressive psychosis DARIAN LEADER 10 Melancholia and the unabandoned object RUSSELL GRIGG 5 11 Madness, subjectivity, and the mirror stage: Lacan and Merleau-Ponty JASPER FEYAERTS AND STIJN VANHEULE 12 Narcissistic neurosis and non-sexual trauma HECTOR YANKELEVICH 13 She’s raving mad: the hysteric, the woman, and the psychoanalyst CLAUDE-NÖELE PICKMANN PART III Madness and creation: environs of the hole 14 The open ego: Woolf, Joyce and the “mad” subject JULIET FLOWER MACCANNELL 15 Normality and segregation in Primo Levi’s Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge PAOLA MIELI 16 Spell it wrong to read it right: Crashaw, psychosis, and Baroque poetics STEPHEN W. WHITWORTH 17 Madness or mimesis: narrative impasse in the novels of Samuel Beckett OLGA COX CAMERON 18 Reading mayhem: schizophrenic writing and the engine of madness MANYA STEINKOLER Index 6 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Jean Allouch is 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 Boothby is 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 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 Psychoanalysis and 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 psychanalyse will 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 7 Lacan. Rolf Flor is 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 Gherovici is 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 Grigg practices 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 Psychoses and 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: 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), The Hysteric’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 8 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 include Sobre as manipulações irreversíveis do corpo (2002), and Being Human: The Technological Extensions of the Body (co-editor, 1999). Geneviève Morel is a psychoanalyst in Paris and Lille whose numerous works have been translated into many languages. She is the president of Savoirs et Clinique, Association pour la Formation Permanente en Psychanalyse (Paris), director of their journal, a member of CFAR and president of the Collège de Psychanalystes d’A.l.e.p.h (Association pour l’étude de la psychanalyse et de son histoire). She has written extensively on art, culture, film and psycho-analysis. Her books include Sexual Ambiguity (2011), Clinique du suicide (2002; 2010), L’œuvre de Freud. L’invention de la psychanalyse (2006), La loi de la mère. Essai sur le sinthome sexuel (2008), Pantallas y sueños. Ensayos psicoanalíticos sobre la imagen en movimiento (2011). Claude-Noële Pickmann is a psychoanalyst in Paris and a member of Espace Analytique, and The Fondation Européenne pour la Psychanalyse. She is the founder of the research group Asphère, dedicated to the question of psycho-analysis and the feminine. Her work focuses on hysteria and the feminine question in clinic and theory. She has published widely in psychoanalytic journals. Manya Steinkoler is a psychoanalyst in New York. She is a member of Après Coup (New York) and Espace Analytique (Paris). She is film editor of The Candidate Journal and has published articles on psychoanalysis and film, literature, opera and financial fraud. She is assistant professor and teaches literature and film at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She is co-editor, with Patricia Gherovici, of Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy (forthcoming). Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, chair of the Department of Psycho-analysis and Clinical Consulting at Ghent University (Belgium), and a psychoanalyst in private practice (member of the New Lacanian School for Psychoanalysis). He is the author of The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective (2011) and Diagnosis and the DSM: A Critical Review (2014), as well as of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psycho-analytic research into psychopathology, and clinical psycho-diagnostics. Paul Verhaeghe is senior professor at Ghent University and has been chair of the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counseling Psychology. He is a member of the European School for Psychoanalysis and the World Association of Psychoanalysis. His books include On Being Normal and Other Disorders (2004), Does the Woman Exist? (1999), Love in a Time of Loneliness (2012), Beyond Gender: From Subject to Drive (2001), New Studies of Old Villains: A Radical Reconsideration of the Oedipus Complex (2009) and more than two hundred papers. Recent books such as What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society (2014) critique contemporary psycho-therapeutic practices and reveal links between contemporary society and the new disorders. Stephen Whitworth is an associate professor of Renaissance Studies in the Department of English at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, and has published numerous articles on Renaissance poetry and Lacanian psycho-analysis. He is a member of the Washington D.C. Forum of the École de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien, and is currently working on a book on male sexuality and seventeenth-century poetry entitled Ravage and the Baroque: Masculine Sexuality and the Seventeenth-Century Devotional Lyric. Hector Yankelevich is a psychoanalyst who has been instrumental in introducing Lacan’s work to Argentina. He taught at the University of Buenos Aires and Rosario. Trained in Paris, he worked in France for more than three decades, writing for several psychoanalytic reviews. He has lectured in Europe, Israel and the US. He is an AME, Analyst Member of the Escuela Freudiana de Buenos Aires. He teaches in the Masters in 9 Psychoanalysis Program at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina. He is the author of Ensayos sobre autismo y psicosis (1997, 2010), Del Padre a la letra (1998), Lógicas del Goce (2000) and Du père à la lettre (2003). Forthcoming is The Logical Assumption of Sex. 10