The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 1-5

3. First Era: The Age of Imaginary Identification

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7

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   2. Psychosis as a Disorder at the Level of the Imaginary

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 9-30

4. Second Era: The Age of the Signifier

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 31-31

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   2. Towards a Structural Study of Psychosis

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 33-49

   3. Foreclosure and Its Vicissitudes

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 50-80

   4. A Novel Approach to Hallucinations

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 81-95

   5. Delusions Scrutinized

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 96-122

5. Third Era: The Age of the Object a

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 123-123

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   2. The Object a and Jouissance in Psychosis

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 125-148

6. Fourth Era: The Age of the Knot

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 149-149

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   2. Psychosis within the Logic of Knotting and Linking

      • Stijn Vanheule

      Pages 151-171

7. Back Matter

   Pages 172-194

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This book discusses what Jacques Lacan's oeuvre contributes to our understanding of psychosis. Presenting a close reading of original texts, Stijn Vanheule proposes that Lacan's work on psychosis can best be framed in terms of four broad periods.

• Lacan
• psychosis
• psychiatry
• identification
• Jacques Lacan
• logic
• novel
• work

"[Vanheule's] clear expository style displays an impressive command of Lacanian theory that will be instructive for anyone who wishes to grasp the difficult logic of Lacan's project. [ ] The Subject of Psychosis may be the clearest and most rigorous analysis of Lacanian theory in print." Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

"This text offers an excellent reading of Lacan's development of a theory of the subject of psychosis that should serve as a springboard into the practise of the psychoanalytic clinic today." - Theory and Psychology

"The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective is an extraordinarily clear decomposition of Lacan's trajectory from surrealist concerns with representations of madness to literary attempts to signifierise it." Psychoanalytical Notebooks

"An important contribution to Lacanian work in English, Vanheule's text is a much-needed, theoretically clear, lucid, sophisticated and critical understanding of Lacanian theoryon psychosis." - Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society

• Ghent University, Belgium

  Stijn Vanheule

STIJN VANHEULE is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting at Ghent University, Belgium, and a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in Private Practice. He is the author of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research into psychopathology, and clinical psychodiagnostics.

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