Lacan - The Psychoses

The Psychoses

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan

BOOK III 19551956

During the third year of his famous seminar, Jacques Lacan gives a concise definition of psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis should be the science of language inhabited by the subject. From the Freudian point of view man is the subject captured and tortured by language. Since psychosis is a special but emblematic case of language entrapment, Lacan devotes much of this year to grappling with the distinctions between the neuroses and the psychoses. As he compares the two, relationships, symmetries, and contrasts emerge that enable him to erect a structure for psychosis.

Freuds famous case of Daniel Paul Schreber is central to Lacans analysis. In demonstrating the many ways that the psychotic is inhabited, possessed by language, Lacan draws upon Schrebers own account of his psychosis and upon Freuds notes on this case of paranoia. The analysis of language is both fascinating and enlightening.

By Jacques Lacan

TELEVISION
THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN BOOK I
THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN BOOK II
ECRITS A SELECTION
FEMININE SEXUALITY
THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

THE PSYCHOSES

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan

Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller

BOOK III 19551956

Translated with notes by
Russell Grigg

Originally published in French as Le Seminaire, Livre III,
Les Psychoses
by Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1981

First published in English translation in 1993
Published in the US by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York

Published in the UK in 1993 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Reprinted 2000

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

English translation W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized 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.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780415101837 (pbk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

This is a translation of the seminar that Lacan delivered to the Socit Fran-aise de Psychanalyse over the course of the academic year 195556. The original French text is the third in a series of Lacans seminars, beginning in 1953, that is being edited by Jacques-Alain Miller.

I have been mindful of James Stracheys translations of Freud in the Standard Edition. On the whole it has been possible to avoid major divergences from Strachey, the two exceptions being to render investissement as investment rather than cathexis and pulsion as drive rather than instinct. In this I follow the practice adopted by the translators of Seminars I and II and by Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).

The translation of this seminar is faced with one further complication arising from the fact that it deals extensively with Schrebers Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Schrebers terms have often been rendered differently in the English translation of the Memoirs, in the Standard Edition version of Freuds case history, and in Lacans article, The question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis, in Ecrits: A Selection. This has, on a very small number of occasions, required some explanation, which will be found in the footnotes.

I should add that I have diverged in two major ways from the translations of Seminars I and II.

First, the terms signification and sens, which appear in Seminars I and II as signification and meaning respectively, have been translated as meaning and sense. I am following the practice of Stuart Schneiderman here, for essentially the same reason he gives: there seems little reason to resort to the archaism of the English signification when there are two common English terms that will do adequate service.

Secondly, the term mconnaissance is rendered as misrecognition, instead of failure to recognize or misunderstanding. The latter term has to be reserved for malentendu, while there are contexts in which the first does not capture the appropriate meaning.

I have followed Seminars I and II in indicating the distinction, a significant one in the original, between moi and ego by putting ego in roman when moi appears in the original and in italics when ego has been used.

Finally, the numbers in the margin of this translation refer to the pagination of the French edition published by Editions du Seuil in 1981. It is hoped that this practice will assist those who, while needing to refer to the English edition, are in a position to consult the original.

I wish to thank Jacques-Alain Miller for the assistance and advice he gave me while I was preparing this translation. I am also grateful to the editor at W. W. Norton, Susan Barrows Munro, for her encouragement and patience in helping me to bring this long and sometimes difficult translation to publication.

Many very helpful comments were made by Kerry Murphy and Rosemary Sorensen, who both generously read an entire draft of the manuscript. I owe them gratitude for invaluable suggestions on ways to improve the style of the translation. Dominique Hecq, with her sensitivity to the idiom of both languages, gave me sound advice on a number of difficult points.

Finally, I would like to record my thanks to Deakin University for its support while I was engaged on this work.

Russell Grigg
Geelong, Australia
June 1992