Well, we now see the practical applicability of diagnosing paranoid schizophrenia. The shooter, Jared L. Loughner, was kicked out of college for being psychotic: “on the first day of the term, the instructor in Jared L. Loughner’s basic algebra class, Ben McGahee, posed what he thought was a simple arithmetic question to his students. He was not prepared for the explosive response – how can you deny math instead of accepting it?” Mr. Loughner asked, after blurting out a random number, according to Mr. McGahee. (KIRK JOHNSON, SERGE F. KOVALESKI, DAN FROSCH and ERIC LIPTON Published: January 9, 2011,NYT.) Let’s just say the number was far from random?

His Facebook posting also reveal his belief that grammar is real, and his delusion that he could control through grammar.

One wonders about the diagnostic abilities of our psychiatrists. It’s possible to differentiate between psychosis, neurological problems, and hysteric madness, and it isn’t all that hard. And it’s also possible to predict violence, as Vicktor Tausk wrote more than one hundred years ago in his paper on ‘influencing machines.’ Those paranoids who believe they can be ‘controlled’ by some malevolent outside force are far more likely to act out violently than those whose delusions aren’t so persecutory.

This suffering man should have been hospitalized, and his parents should have have received services to help them get him the treatment he needed, and to take the medication that could have calmed him. Now people have died, and this man is in the criminal justice system, not in a locked ward receiving treatment I’ve heard politicians call him evil, to which I call them medieval.

Anna Shane

Perhaps the first on this blog should speak to our Society and membership/participation. We have new officers, I’m back as president, Michael Brown is vice-president, and Cristella Castro, a real CPA, is our treasurer. But, there are several Lacanian groups in this area, and in fact we get most interest from outside our area, other states and other countries. All our time is volunteered, and in the past we used to do more presentations, for example the last time Slavoj Zizek was in the area we sponsored his talk.

I’d like to think that we’re an international organization, regardless of our name, as we have cosponsored events elsewhere. Our past art editor, Scott Henstrand, lives in Brooklyn, and we co-sponsored a talk he organized at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and sent Janet Thormann, who spoke on drives.

I know there are students of Lacanian theory who’d like to meet up with some others, and start study groups or cartels, and this would be a place to identify yourselves and your interests. Why not internet cartels? Goodness knows there are few enough to make distance hardly the most daunting obstacle.

It’s easy to join the society, it’s fifty tax-deductible bucks for professionals and thirty for students, and most of our services are free, even for non-members. Maybe there is someone who’d like to do something for our journal, perhaps a potential poetry editor with time and talent and some ideas about the objet a ? Anyway, we invite all of you to post something here and let us know who you are and how our organization may serve your interests.

Anna Shane

Today I received an interesting question, that may perhaps encourage a discussion about psychosis? Here it is:

Question:
I’ve read that in analysis the neurotic/hysteric faces lack or castration, but that with a psychotic you don’t work in the symbolic but in the imaginary register, and strengthen it because that’s what they have to hold on. How does one recognize, just by listening to someone talk, if he/she has a psychotic structure? The reason I ask is because I’m afraid of talking with someone and triggering a psychotic break.

Dr. Shane Replies:
Actually it’s easiest to diagnosis psychosis, and differentiate it from mere madness. It’s in speech, since the psychotic can speak but can’t utilize the properties of speech, which for us are metaphor and metonymy – everything the psychotic says is real, he really means it. In Shereber, the rays of the sun are real rays, no metaphor. You can find something similar in those with brain damage, some lose that ability, for example I once saw a guy with a head injury and I was giving him directions and said, go through the swinging door, which was at that time propped open, and he thought I was joking because it wasn’t actually swinging. In contrast, psychotics can’t get jokes, which doesn’t mean they haven’t learned to join in with laughing. It is possible to trigger an psychotic episode, by allowing a psychotic to blunder into some logical impossibility (which can happen if free association is encouraged) and then they freak out, or by pointing out a logical impossibility. I did that once, but then I figured it out in enough time and then just repeated her certainties, and she reconstituted, very scary, but I was just starting out then and I didn’t know how easy it was to bring out, I was clumsy. We don’t treat psychosis with psychoanalysis, for that reason, and also because it’s not something that can be reversed. When you speak about staying in the imaginary, that’s what it means, no access to the symbolic because it hasn’t been installed, so everything is too real, and way too scary. So, they come up with some delusion that explains their experience, that is also unfortunately and sometimes tragically real, and can lead to violence. It’s a miserable state to be in, just terror. You can find something perhaps on non-manifest psychosis, which can be diagnosed the same way, but where the psychotic has found a way to function. Those guys who always know the train schedules, and immerse themselves in those facts – that can be a way to cope. There is also something that used to be called psychotic reaction, which is where someone seems fine unless they get on the subject of some conspiracy theory, like the Kennedy assassination, and then you find their ‘certainty.’ Psychotics need certainty. But they can all be diagnosed through language, if your person has access to metaphor and can get a joke, then he doesn’t have that structure.

This is the first blog post of the Society’s blog. We hope you will enjoy reading.