Report for the ‘knottings’ seminar of the Hellenic Society of the NLS – Athens, 19 September 2015

REPORT
FOR
THE ‘KNOTTINGS’ SEMINAR OF THE HELLENIC
SOCIETY OF THE NLS–
ATHENS 19 SEPTEMBER 2015


Par Argyris
Tsakos

On Saturday, 19 September 2015, in the
crowded amphitheatre of “G. Gennimatas” Athens General
Hospital, the Hellenic Society of the NLS held the
“Knottings” seminar of the NLS, entitled “Discreet signs
in ordinary psychosis – clinic and treatment”, the
subject of the annual Congress of the NLS (Dublin 2-3
July 2016). The secretary of the NLS, psychoanalyst, and
president of the NLS Québec, Anne Béraud, took part,
next to psychoanalysts who presented clinical cases.
They were psychoanalysts and members of the NLS Luc
Vander Vennet, (Kring-Belgium), Dosia Avdelidi (Hellenic
Society- Greece), and Pamela King (Marseilles).


The
seminar started with the greeting and the introduction
by the president of the Hellenic Society, Anna Pigkou,
who spoke about the turn to the teaching of knotting in
Lacan’s later teaching, and continued with the
theoretical introduction by Anne Béraud, relevant to the
subject of the forthcoming congress of the NLS.

Anne
Béraud
started
by saying
that by the title JAM has suggested to us for the forthcoming
congress
puts us in immediate connection to our time and therefore
to our
clinic: there are numerous ways of
jouissance
without exception, nor a master. In our practice we
encounter more
and more psychotics whose symptoms are not signified by
delirium or
delusions. The triggering

of
psychosis
might be very discreet or absent, the subjects can be lost
in the
“normality”. JAM, in order to address this mutation
suggested the
constitution “ordinary psychosis”, in the Congress of
Antibes in
1998. Ordinary psychosis insists in the singularity of the
knotting
there is for every subject. “Discreet signs” are a
peculiarity of
ordinary psychosis we ought to locate in our clinic.

It
concerns light disorders of speech or character, a
penetration of the
gaze, speech of others. Life is not articulated with the
life of
others, where something is grinding. The title of the
forthcoming
Congress also emphasizes treatment. There is a variety of
solutions
subjects find either by themselves or by their work with a
psychoanalyst.

The
first period in Lacan’s teaching, the clinic of the
Name-of-the-Father, is characterized by a logic which is not
continuous; structuralist; bipolar (neurosis, psychosis). The
Borromean clinic, the clinic of knotting is continuous. On the
one
hand, there is the clinic without knotting (psychosis), while
on the
other hand there is the clinic with knotting (neurosis,
ordinary
psychosis). The Name-of-the-Father is creating the knotting in
neurosis.

The
three orders/consistencies (RSI) are knotted thanks to a term
that
Lacan calls
sinthome.
In the Discussion of Arcachon Miller is clarifying that the
sinthome
is functioning as the “joint brace” of the other three circles
and produces the singularities of the knotting in each case.
In his
text “Ordinary Psychosis Revisited” Miller is using the term
“a
compensatory make-believe of the Name-of-the-Father”.

This
is a special element which for every subject is functioning as
the
Name-of-the-Father. This element is occupying the central hole
in
psychosis and counterbalances it. Nevertheless, it is not
turning
into a Name-of-the-Father, even if the psychotic is appearing
in the
“suit of neurosis”. Knotting is lasting through the
sinthome,
an invention of the subject which is set as equal to the
Name-of-the-Father. The second Lacanian theory from this point
of
view is not counterposed to the first: if it concerns a
psychosis we
must see of which kind it is (paranoia, schizophrenia,
melancholy).

The
clinic of ordinary psychosis is showing the presence of the
elementary
phenomenon
.
S1’s cannot find S2 and they remain in an elementary
situation. In the
triggered psychosis the S2 is the delusional metaphor. The
matter in
ordinary psychosis is to find the non-articulated element and
its
usage by the subject. Ordinary psychosis is a clinic of “few
indications of the foreclosure” and we ought to look for those
indications.

Miller notes a threefold
externality – a
social
externality
,
a
bodily
externality

and a
subjective
externality
:

  1. The
    relation to the social
    : it concerns subjects who are incapable to
    support their social function. But Miller is drawing our
    attention that the people who have a very strong
    identification with their social position might be the
    same thing. The work becomes their own Name-of-the-Father.

  1. The
    relation to the body
    : something does not fit, the body is
    decomposing. The subject “has need of something which can
    tie the joint, so as to be able to be restrained to its
    body”, “ to tie its body to itself”. Fashion is
    socializing for the psychotics and defining the tattooing
    or the piercing as a psychotic characteristic is an
    element of exaggeration, that there is no limitation from
    the –
    φ.

  1. Subjective
    externality
    : the idea the subject has of itself. How it
    considers itself as a waste or the contrary. “It is the
    experience of the emptiness, of a non dialectic
    experience’s wave, with a special fixation of this
    indication”. Miller is giving very precise
    recommendations: “stability of identification (real and
    not symbolic) with the object
    a as a waste”. A
    possibility for the subject to defend to it by an extreme
    mannerism.

Treatment

Stabilization
through the imaginary
:
it concerns a type of adjustment with the non dialectic Other
who is
based on a “like the others”. It is at the same time a sign of
psychosis and its stabilization, through an imaginary
identification
with a similar based on the axis
α
α’.
This produces normalization.

Naming:
the subject is supported by the analyst for the work of naming
and
translating its
jouissance.
To find “signs of communication where the Other is evacuated
from
its
jouissance”,
so as to “joint brace” its being. That exact same meeting with
the analyst can form a
sinthome.

Making
a
body outside of the body
:
Lacan is presenting the solution of Joyce as the following: he
is
creating a body for himself within a literary corpus. He is
creating
a
jouissance
outside of his body. He produces his solution in an assignment
regarding the language outside meaning. He is creating a name,
an
ego, within his writing. Joyce is seeking to construct in his
work
“the uncrated spirit of his race/tribe”, which concerns a
construction of the Name-of-the-Father.

The
clinic of continuity is very pragmatic
:
localization of the characteristic which stabilizes, to help
this
stabilization or to allow to the subject find another one. We
can
work on the basis of what was disconnected, in order to
reconnect the
subject. The arrangements that subjects find in therapy may
function
as a joint brace, even if things remain fragile, while the
work of
the analyst may help the subject, through transference, to
construct
a new one.

The
matter is not so much the decoding or interpretation but the
establishment of a construction and the support “of
knowledge’s
elaboration which has been disconnected from the truth of the
unconscious” and it is this that allows the knotting. The
matter is
for someone to be able to graft the private with common
language.
Sometimes therapy might be recommended as finding a way in
daily life
for the non-understandable and the enigma. Hence we must show
interest for the little things which bother the subject and
work is
recommended in a constant
regularization.


Luc Vander
Vennet
presented a case of a young woman, who wanted to
speak to him because of a depression after a series of
failures and unpleasant experiences. Abandonments and the
rejections set some questions, but the discreet sign of her
psychosis was the strange way she was dressed: a dress which
did not correspond to her age and the time of the year.
Speaking of her depression she has mentioned she even felt it
in her body, that she was
cold.


There was always an
incongruity, a gap between the image that she was seeing
inside the mirror and the body she was feeling. This mismatch
revealed her psychosis. In this case we observe the
identification’s fixation with the object a as a waste, which
is not symbolic, but real. She materialized in a repetitive
way a reeallization (réellisation) of this identification. On
which sinthomatic knotting has she managed to hold on for a
great period in her life? She was an exception as a “good
student” which transfused an imaginary cover for her. She took
up artistic studies. It was a way for the gaze which was
fixated to her as a young girl to be exported. She penetrated
into an artistic environment and created in this way a new
family which respected her.

She came for analysis
after the rejection of her work by a committee, after the
dissolution of her sinthome. Thanks to analytical work and her
elaborations she managed to communicate again with her mother
and convince her to go together shopping to look, try, pick
and buy … clothes. 


Dosia
Avdelidi

presented a case of a young woman who has no fantasy or desire
to
orientate her. This young woman faces difficulties in the
subjective,
as well as in the social and bodily level. It is impossible
for her
to be part of the working network, a fact which causes her
anxiety
and sorrow. The experience of emptiness is not articulated and
her
identification to the object
a
as waste is real. In the end, the crack in her body is
experienced as
anguished and unbearable; she cannot undertake it.


This
specific subject has
never had a positive symptom of psychosis, no elementary
phenomenon,
nor a delirium or delusions. Her difficulty is reduced to the
absence
of a fantasy
that
would orientate her
existence and give her an intention and guidance.
Consequently, the
characteristics of the clinic of desolation – that is, the
subjective
vacillation, the latent presence of a threatening Other who
draws
jouissance
from the subject, and the dynamic which is alleging from the
support
of the familiar – is present in her case.

After
five years in therapy, she managed to find a job and handle
the
anxiety it was causing her. The Other seems to be less
enigmatic and
her daily life is less boring while she also deals with an
artistic
activity which she seems to like. Finally she managed to live
with
much less anxiety, by pulling aside more and more often the
demands
of the superego.

Pamela
King

presented three cases which show the threefold externalities
(bodily,
social, subjective). The
first
case
is
showing the
bodily externality. It concerns a woman who wants to free
herself
form the “crises of bulimia” which last for many years. The
emptiness of her object
a,
which is not
caught
in phallic meaning, returns to the real, escorted by the
severe
demand to look alike in the only image which she has from her
mother:
her absorbed cheeks. Instead of mourning, she is making a
passage to
the act through a first bulimic incident. Behind the horror of
getting fat, there is also the radical and persecutory gaze of
the
father. Something which has not been symbolized is returning
within
the image. This image is later eliminated from the body.
Despite
their catastrophic dimension, the bulimic crises allow a point
of
balance. This woman is featuring this point of balance by the
choice
of her profession: the act of filling and emptying is repeated
in her
profession -but not without a disaster. This is the point of
an
attempted retrieval of her body.

The second
case
which
shows
the social externality, concerns a mature woman. In late age,
she
wants to do a master’s research, to “legitimize” her
professional skills. We find out very shortly that this lack
of
“legitimacy” is touching her deeply: she has never received it
from her parents. She feels uprooted from the society and she
is
suffering from this. She claims that it is up to her to
legitimize on
her own. The feeling that she is in “exile” is the first
discreet
sign of ordinary psychosis. The second appears the moment she
starts
writing her dissertation. Research suits her. But to find
things by
writing is impossible. By the non-function of the
Name-of-the-Father,
she cannot write on behalf of her name. She produces nothing
but
fragments of writing. She is looking for legitimacy, which she
has
never received from her parents, from the symbolic-through the
university. For many years now, she is collecting newspaper
and
magazine articles on specific subjects. It seems that she is
holding
on fragments (pieces) of language.

The third
case
shows
the
subjective externality. It concerns a young student who has
failed
passing the semester by the same way: the moment comes before
the
exams and then she is panicking in front of the remaining
time. After
this, she starts negotiations with her teachers to retrieve
the
fragments of the missing grades. She gives the impression that
she is
taking a place of greatness regarding the Other. She tattooed
a
phrase in her body which means that a superior being is not
dealing
with insignificant matters. It is this exact phrase which
showed as a
sign, very discreet, of her psychosis. If we read it
backwards, it
concerns identification to the real with a waste, a nothing, a
less-than-a-unit. For years now she is not related to her
failure, on
the contrary, she remains fixated to the certain percentage
that she
is missing. This subjective externality is identification to
the
real, “since the subject is going to the direction of the
realization (materialization) of the waste in its face”. The
sessions in these years, produced a relief of her anxiety,
while the
symptoms, regardless their difficulties, are being used as a
sign of
stability (stabilization). After a dream this young woman will
erase
her tattoo to deal with the “insignificant” material of the
dream.

Argyris
Tsakos

New Lacanian School
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