Seminar III : The Psychoses : 1955-1956 : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan
by Julia Evans on November 16, 1955
Content
- Publication
- References
- Contents & Editor’s titles & page numbers:
- Commentaries
- Citations
Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /texts by request Password on request here
1. Publication
Originally published in French as
‘Le Séminaire, Livre III, Les Psychoses : Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller : Éditions du Seuil : Paris : 1981
Published in English
The Psychoses, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller : Book III 1955-1956 : Translated by Russell Grigg : Routledge : 1993
Introduction by John Forrester (p1 or i of book)
‘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 the language.’
This was the concise definition of psychoanalysis given by Jacques Lacan in the third year of his famous seminar. Since psychosis is a special but emblematic case of language entrapment, Lacan devotes much of this year to grappling with 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.
Freud’s famous case of Daniel Paul Schreber is central to Lacan’s analysis. In demonstrating the many ways that the psychotic is ‘inhabited, possessed by language,’ Lacan draws upon Schreber’s own account of his psychosis and upon Freud’s notes on ‘this case of paranoia.’ The analysis of language is both fascinating and enlightening.
‘A perusal of this seminar may well convince many that Lacan was the most original psychoanalyst since Freud.’
John Forrester, The Times Literary Supplement
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From p4 or iv of the book:
The Psychoses The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
BOOK III 1955-1956
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.
Freud’s famous case of Daniel Paul Schreber is central to Lacan’s analysis. In demonstrating the many ways that the psychotic is ‘inhabited, possessed by language’, Lacan draws upon Schreber’s own account of his psychosis and upon Freud’s notes on this ‘case of paranoia’. The analysis of language is both fascinating and enlightening.
By Jacques Lacan
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Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /texts by request Password on request here
_______________________________
2. References
General References
Introduction to ‘A bi-lingual edition of Schreber’s Memoirs of my mental illness/ Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken’: August 2005: Richard G. Klein or available here
Presentation of the ‘Memoirs’ of President Schreber in French translation: November 1966: Jacques Lacan or available here
Case history of Schreber: 1910: Sigmund Freud
Memoirs of my nervous illness: 1903: D. P. Schreber or here
References by Session
Seminar III : Session of 16th November 1955 : Ch I : p3-15
p4-5 Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault or here
p4 of Russell Grigg’s translation : The prognosis of dementia praecox: the group of schizophrenias : 1908 : Eugene Bleuler or available here
Seminar III : 23rd November 1955 : Ch II : p16-28
p17-19 & 23 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Dementia Praecox : 1896 : Emil Kraepelin or here
p17-18 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Misinterpretative delusional states : 1909 : Paul Sérieux & Joseph Capgras or here
p18-19 : Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault or here
Seminar III : 14th December 1955 : Ch V : p59-72
p61 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Further Remarks about Schreber’s Hallucinations : July 1951 [1952] (Amsterdam) : Maurits Katan or here
p61 of Russell Grigg’s translation Schreber’s Prepsychotic Phase : 1st July 1951 [1953] : Maurits Katan or here
p61 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Hallucinations about the ‘Little Men’ : August 1949 (Zürich) : Maurits Katan or here
Seminar III : 21st December 1955 : Ch VI : p73-88
Jacques Lacan reads the article published in Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan (See here) as The Freudian Thing or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis : (Vienna) 7th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan :
Information here
Seminar III : 11th January 1956 : Ch VII : p89-101
Ego psychology and interpretation in psychoanalytic therapies (Case ‘fresh brains’) : December 1948 (New York) [1951] : Ernst Kris or here
Intellectual Inhibition & Disturbances in Eating (Dream ‘fresh brains’) : September 1933 [Published1938] : Melitta Schmideberg or here
Seminar III : 25th January 1956 : Ch VIII : p102-116
p102 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Hallucinations about the ‘Little Men’ : August 1949 (Zürich) : Maurits Katan or here
Seminar III : 1st February 1956 : Ch IX : p117-129
p125 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Dementia Praecox : 1896 : Emil Kraepelin or here
Seminar III : Session of 8th February 1956 : Ch X : Ch X : p130-142
P135 of Russell Grigg’s translation : The prognosis of dementia praecox: the group of schizophrenias : 1908 : Eugene Bleuler or here
p135 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Dementia Praecox : 1896 : Emil Kraepelin or here
Seminar III : 15th February 1956 : Ch XI : p143-160
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess: 6th December 1896 : Known as Letter 52 or here: Titled as ‘Periodicity and Self-Analysis’
Letter of 24th January 1895 and Draft H, Paranoia (The Emma Eckstein episode) : 24th January 1895 : Sigmund Freud or available here
Seminar III : 14th March 1956: Ch XII : p161-172
A Man’s Unconscious Phantasy of Pregnancy in the Guise of Traumatic Hysteria—A Clinical Contribution to Anal Erotism : 1921 : Michael Josef Eisler or here
Ego psychology and interpretation in psychoanalytic therapies (Case ‘fresh brains’) : December 1948 (New York) [1951] : Ernst Kris or here
Seminar III : 21st March 1956 : Ch XIII : p173-182
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess: 6th December 1896 : Known as Letter 52 or here
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess: 30th May 1896 : Known as Letter 46 or here
Seminar III : 11th April 1956 : Ch XIV : p183-195
p191 Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault or here
p191 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Further Remarks about Schreber’s Hallucinations : July 1951 [1952] (Amsterdam) : Maurits Katan or here
P191-192 : Schreber’s Prepsychotic Phase : 1st July 1951 [1953] : Maurits Katan or here
P192-193 (the ‘as if’ case) : Some forms of emotional disturbance and their relationship to schizophrenia: 1942 : Helene Deutsch : See here for a full quote of this reference.
Quote from p193 of Russell Grigg’s translation in Of Structure as an inmixing of an Otherness prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever: 21st October 1966 (Baltimore) : Jacques Lacan or here
Notes & Extracts
P191, 192, 193 : Extracts from Jacques Lacan’s Seminar III : 20th March 2016 : Yves Vandeveken or here
Seminar III : 18th April 1956 : Ch XV : p196-205
p202, 203 : Extracts from Jacques Lacan’s Seminar III : 20th March 2016 : Yves Vandeveken or here
p203-204 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Hallucinations about the ‘Little Men’ : August 1949 (Zürich) : Maurits Katan or here
Seminar III : 25th April 1956 : Ch XVI : p206-213
p211-212 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Hallucinations about the ‘Little Men’ : August 1949 (Zürich) : Maurits Katan or here
A Man’s Unconscious Phantasy of Pregnancy in the Guise of Traumatic Hysteria—A Clinical Contribution to Anal Erotism : 1921 : Michael Josef Eisler or here
Seminar III : 2nd May 1956 : Ch XVII : p214-221
Letter of 24th January 1895 and Draft H, Paranoia (The Emma Eckstein episode) : 24th January 1895 : Sigmund Freud or here
Seminar III : 6th June 1956 : Ch XXII : p258-270
P269 : Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault or here
Seminar III : 13th June 1956 : Ch XXIII : p271-284
P274 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Dementia Praecox : 1896 : Emil Kraepelin or here
Seminar III : 27th June 1956 : Ch XXIV : p295-309
Presentation of the ‘Memoirs’ of President Schreber in French translation: November 1966: Jacques Lacan or available here
Translator’s introduction & analysis of D. P. Screber’s case: : 1955: Ida MacAlpine & Richard Hunter or available here
P307 : Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault or here
Seminar III : 4th July 1956 : Ch XXV : p310-323
Presentation of the ‘Memoirs’ of President Schreber in French translation: November 1966: Jacques Lacan or available here
Translator’s introduction & analysis of D. P. Screber’s case: : 1955: Ida MacAlpine & Richard Hunter or available here
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3. Contents & Editor’s titles:
The translator is Russell Grigg.
Introduction by John Forrester – see above
Seminar III by Jacques Lacan – see above
Translator’s note pvii
Abbreviations pix
INTRODUCTION TO THE QUESTION OF THE PSYCHOSES
Seminar III: Session of 16th November 1955 : Ch I – Introduction to the question of the psychoses : p3-15
Subheadings: Schizophrenia and paranoia, M. de Clérambault, The mirages of understanding, From verneining to verwerfung, Psychosis and psychoanalysis
Seminar III: 23rd November 1955: Ch II – The meaning of delusion : p16-28
Subheadings: Critique of Kraepelin, Dialectical inertia, Séglas and psychomotor hallucination, Président Schreber
Seminar III: 30th November 1955 : Ch III The Other and psychosis : p29-43
Subheadings: Homosexuality and paranoia, The word and the refrain, Automatism and endoscopy, paranoid knowledge, Grammar of the unconscious
Seminar III : 7th December 1955 : Ch IV -“I’ve just been to the butcher’s” : p44-56
Subheadings: What returns in the real, Puppets of delusion, R. S. I. in language, The erotization of the signifier.
THEMATICS AND STRUCTURE OF THE PSYCHOTIC PHENOMENON
Seminar III : 14th December 1955 : Ch V – On a god who does not deceive and one who does : p59-70
Subheadings: Psychosis is not a simple fact of language, The dialect of symptoms, It really must be rather pleasant to be a woman … , God and science, Schreber’s God
Seminar III : 21st December 1955 : Appendix : The following session : The discourse of the desk : p71-72 :
Jacques Lacan reads the article published in the Écrits as “The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis.” See The Freudian Thing or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis : (Vienna) 7th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan or here or Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan or here
Seminar III : 11th January 1956 : Ch VI – The psychotic phenomenon and its mechanism : p73-88
Subheadings: Certainty and reality, Schreber is no poet, The notion of defense, Verdichtung, Verdrängung, Verneinung, and Verwerfung
Seminar III : 18th January 1956 : Ch VII – The imaginary dissolution : p89-101
Subheading: Dora and her quadrilateral, Eros and aggression in the male stickleback, What is called the Father, The fragmentation of identity
Seminar III : 25th January 1956 : Ch VIII – The symbolic sentence : p102-116
Subheading: The notion of defense, The Patient’s testimony, The sense of reality, Verbal phenomena
Seminar III : 1st February 1956 : Ch IX – On nonsense and the structure of God : p117-129
Subheadings: Principles of the analysis of delusion, Delusional interlocution, Being forsaken, Dialogue and voluptuousness, God’s politics
Seminar III : Session of 8th February 1956: Ch X – On the signifier in the real and the bellowing-miracle : p130-142
Sub-headings: Psychiatry’s main fact; The discourse of freedom; The peace of the evening; Subjective topology
Seminar III : 15th February 1956 : Ch XI – On the rejection of a primordial signifier : p143-157
Subheadings: A twin that is big with delusion, Day and night, Verwerfung, Letter 52
ON THE SIGNIFIER AND THE SIGNIFIED
Seminar III : 14th March 1956 : Ch XII of the translation : The hysteric’s question : p161-172
Sub-headings: On the preverbal world; Preconscious and unconscious; Sign, trace, signifier; A traumatic hysteria:
Seminar III : 21st March 1956 : Ch XIII – The hysteric’s question (II): What is a woman? : p173-182
Subheadings: Dora and the feminine organ, The signifying dissymmetry, The symbolic and procreation, Freud and the signifier
Seminar III : 11th April 1956 : Ch XIV – The signifier, as such, signifies nothing : p183-195
Subheadings: The notion of structure, Subjectivity in the real, How to locate the beginning of a delution, the between-Is
Seminar III : 18th April 1956 : Ch XV – On primordial signifiers and the lack of one : p196-205
Subheadings: A crossroads, Basic signifiers, A new signifier in the real, Approaches to the hole, Identificatory compensation
Seminar III : 25th April 1956 : Ch XVI Secretaries to the insane : p206-213
Sub-headings: A reading; Soul murder; The implications of the signifier; The little men; The three functions of the father
Seminar III : 2nd May 1956 : Ch XVII – Metaphor and metonymy (I): “His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful” : p214-221
Subheadings: The truth of the Father, The invasion by the signifier, Syntax and metaphor, Wernicke’s Aphasia
Seminar III : 9th May 1956 : Ch XVIII – Metaphor and metonymy (II): Signifying articulation and transference of the signified : p222-230
Subheadings: Sensory aphasia and motor aphasia, The positional link, All language is metalanguage, Detail and desire
Seminar III : 16th May 1956 : Ch XIX – An address : Freud in the century : p231-244
THE ENVIRONS OF THE HOLE
Seminar III : 30th May 1956 : Ch XX – The appeal, the allusion : p247-257
Subheadings: The onset of psychosis, Speaking out, The madness of love, The evolution of delusion.
Seminar III : 6th June 1956 : Ch XXI – The quilting point (Point de capiton) : p258-270
Subheadings: Sense and scansion, The full circle and segmentation, “Yes, I come into his temple…” , The fear of God, The Father – a quilting point (Point de caption)
Seminar III : 13th June 1956 : Ch XXII – “Thou art the one who wilt follow me” : p271-284
Subheading: The Other is a locus, The you of the superego, devolution and observation, The voice, Interpellation of the signifier
Seminar III : 20th June 1956 : Ch XXIII – The highway and the signifier “being a father” : p285-294
Subheading: Thou art the one who followest me the best.
Thou art the one who follows me like a little dog.
Thou art the one who did follow me that day.
Thou art the one who didst follow me through trials
Thou art the one who followest the law… the text.
Thou art the one who follows the mob.
Thou art the one who did follow me.
Thou art the one who art.
Thou art the one who is.
Seminar III : 27th June 1956 : “Thou art” : Ch XXIV : p295-309
Sub-headings: Forms of gaps, The verb to be, From the thou to the other, The tortoise and the two ducks, The onset of psychosis.
Seminar III : 4th July 1956 : Ch XXV – The phallus and the meteor : p310-323
Sub-headings: Prevalence of castration, Ida MacAlpine, Natural symbolization and sublimation, The rainbow, Inserted in the father.
4. Commentaries
p290 Seminar III : 4th July 1956 : Pour que les signes restent discrets : 28th March 2016 : Dominique Holvoet or here
Jacques Lacan comments Dream ‘fresh brains’ in Seminars I, III, VI & X and Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis : 26th & 27th September 1953 & Direction of the Treatment : 10th to 13th July 1958 by Julia Evans on 30th January 2014 or here
5. Citation
Towards the World Association of Psychoanalysis’s Great International Online Conversation on the theme: THE WOMAN DOES NOT EXIST, 31 March – 1 April 2022, circulated by AMP-UQBAR as AMP 2022 – La femme n’existe pas – CITATIONS on 27th January 2022 at 12:59:22 GMT:
From Seminar III : 21st March 1956 : p176 of Russell Grigg’s translation :
I should say that strictly speaking there is no symbolization of woman’s sex1 as such. In any case, the symbolization isn’t the same, it doesn’t have the same source or the same mode of access as the symbolization of man’s sex.1 And this is because the imaginary only furnishes an absence where else- where there is a highly prevalent symbol.
It’s the prevalence of the phallic Gestalt that in bringing about the oedipal complex forces the woman to take a detour via identification with the father and therefore for a while to follow the same paths as the boy. The woman’s access to the oedipal complex, her imaginary identification, is accomplished via the father, exactly as in the boy’s case, by virtue of the prevalence of the imaginary form of the phallus, but insofar as this form is itself taken as the symbolic element central to the Oedipus complex.
If for the girl as much as for the boy the castration complex assumes a pivotal value in bringing about the Oedipus complex; it does so precisely as a function of the father, because the phallus is a symbol to which there is no correspondent, no equivalent. It’s a matter of a dissymmetry in the signifier. This signifying dissymmetry determines the paths down which the Oedipus complex will pass. The two paths make them both pass down the same trail – the trail of castration.
Footnote 1 : 1 “le sexe” which may also mean the genitals
Related texts :
On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis : December 1955-January 1956 [1958] : two most important parts of Seminar III : Jacques Lacan or here
Three Notes on the Schreber Case : 14th March 1950 (New York) : William G. Niederland or here
Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan or here
Autres Écrits: 2001 : Jacques Lacan or here
Texts on Daniel Paul Schreber https://lacanianworks.net/category/practice/case-studies/case-studies-people/historial-figures/president-schreber/
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Note : If links to any text do not work, check www.LacanianWorksExchange.net. If a particular text or book remains absent, contact Julia Evans.
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Practicing Lacanian Psychoanalyst
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References
Hallucinations about the ‘Little Men’ : August 1949 (Zürich) : Maurits Katan or here
Schreber’s Prepsychotic Phase : 1st July 1951 [1953] : Maurits Katan or here
Further Remarks about Schreber’s Hallucinations : July 1951 [1952] (Amsterdam) : Maurits Katan or here
Some forms of emotional disturbance and their relationship to schizophrenia (‘as if’ case) : 1942 : Helene Deutsch : See here
Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault or here
Misinterpretative delusional states : 1909 : Paul Sérieux & Joseph Capgras or here
The prognosis of dementia praecox: the group of schizophrenias : 1908 : Eugene Bleuler or here
Dementia Praecox : 1896 : Emil Kraepelin or here
Letter of 24th January 1895 and Draft H, Paranoia (The Emma Eckstein episode) : 24th January 1895 : Sigmund Freud or here
Availability of commentaries & related texts:
The Samuel Weber (1973) commentary has details of all the information published since 1903. It also has a very good map of the content of the ‘Memoirs’.
– Memoirs of my nervous illness: 1903: D. P. Schreber or here
– Case history of Schreber: 16th December 1910: Sigmund Freud or here
– Translator’s introduction & analysis of D. P. Schreber’s case: : 1955: Ida MacAlpine & Richard Hunter or available here
– On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis : 1955-1956 : two most important parts of Seminar III : Jacques Lacan or here : This is dated December 1955 to January 1956 at the end of the text.
– Seminar III: The Psychoses: 1955-1956: from 16th November 1955: Jacques Lacan or here
– Editor’s Introduction (Psycho-Analytic Notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) [Case of Schreber] : 1958 : James Strachey or here
– Presentation of the ‘Memoirs’ of President Schreber in French translation: November 1966: Jacques Lacan or available here
– Introduction to Schreber’s ‘Memoirs of my nervous illness’: 1973: Samuel Weber or here
– Introduction to D. P. Schreber’s ‘Memoirs : 2000 : Rosemary Dinnage or here
– Introduction to ‘A bi-lingual edition of Schreber’s Memoirs of my mental illness/ Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken’: August 2005: Richard G. Klein or available here
Related texts
For further engagements with this case, see Case of President Schreber : 1910 in References to Sigmund Freud within LacanianWorks or here
Schreber’s case revisited with echoes noted in the family of Fred West by Julia Evans : 11th January 2015 : Available here
Ordinary Psychosis: elaborations of James I/VI, Hamlet & Oedipus by Julia Evans on 28th November 2015 or here
Schreber’s case revisited with echoes noted in the family of Fred West by Julia Evans on 11th January 2015 : Available here
An Examination of ‘Learned Helplessness’ by Julia Evans on 11th December 2014 or here
What Cannot Be Said: Desire, Fantasy, Real : 11th September 2013 : Dominique Holvoet or here
Psychosis, or Radical Belief in the Symptom : 17th June 2012 : Éric Laurent : given in Tel Aviv, Israel or here
The case, from unease to the lie : 2002 : Éric Laurent or here
Three Enigmas: Meaning, Signification, Jouissance : February 1993 : Éric Laurent or here
Lacan and the Discourse of the Other : 1968 : Anthony Wilden or here
Other texts
Click on categories in the right hand margin, then scroll down.
Availability of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of my nervous illness & many of the commentaries by Julia Evans on 2ndSeptember 2015 or at http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=11934
Texts related to the case of President Schreber https://lacanianworks.net/category/practice/case-studies/case-studies-people/historial-figures/president-schreber/
By Daniel Paul Schreber https://lacanianworks.net/category/by-author/schreber-daniel-paul/
By Sigmund Freud https://lacanianworks.net/category/by-author/freud-sigmund/
Notes on texts by Sigmund Freud https://lacanianworks.net/category/works-in-progress/freud/
By Jacques Lacan https://lacanianworks.net/category/by-author/lacan-jacques/
Notes on texts by Jacques Lacan https://lacanianworks.net/category/works-in-progress/lacan/
Use of power https://lacanianworks.net/category/networking-politics/b-policy/ii-use-of-power/
Of the clinic https://lacanianworks.net/category/practice/case-studies/case-studies-clinical/
Ordinary Psychosis https://lacanianworks.net/category/practice/case-studies/case-studies-clinical/ordinary-psychosis/
Lacanian Transmission https://lacanianworks.net/category/networking-politics/a-ethics/lacanian-transmission/
Some Lacanian History https://lacanianworks.net/category/lacanianworks-references-to-freud-lacan/some-lacanian-history/
From LW working groups https://lacanianworks.net/category/works-in-progress/
By Julia Evans http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=12365