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

__________________

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

____________________________________

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 16^th 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 : 23^rd 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 : 14^thDecember 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 : 21^st 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 : 25^thJanuary 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 : 1^st February 1956 : Ch IX : p117-129

p125 of Russell Grigg’s translation : Dementia Praecox : 1896 : Emil Kraepelin or here

Seminar III : Session of 8^th 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 : 15^th 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 : 18^thApril 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 : 2^nd 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 : 27^th 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 : 4^th 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

________________________________

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 16^th 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: 23^rd November 1955: Ch II – The meaning of delusion : p16-28

Subheadings: Critique of Kraepelin, Dialectical inertia, Séglas and psychomotor hallucination, Président Schreber

Seminar III: 30^th 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 : 7^th 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 : 14^th 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 : 21^st 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 : 11^th 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 : 18^th 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 : 25^th 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 : 1^st 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 8^th 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 : 15^th 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 : 21^st 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 : 11^th 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 : 18^th 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 : 2^nd 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 : 9^th 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 : 16^th May 1956 : Ch XIX – An address : Freud in the century : p231-244

THE ENVIRONS OF THE HOLE

Seminar III : 30^th 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 : 6^th 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 : 13^th 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 : 20^th 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 : 27^th 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 : 4^th 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 : 4^thJuly 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 30^thJanuary 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 27^th January 2022 at 12:59:22 GMT:

From Seminar III : 21^st 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

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/

Note : If links to any text do not work, check www.LacanianWorksExchange.net. If a particular text or book remains absent, contact Julia Evans.

Julia Evans

Practicing Lacanian Psychoanalyst

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