Principles of Psychoanalytic Analysis of Psychotic Literary

Principles of Psychoanalytic Analysis of Psychotic Literary Features: An Illustration on the Work of Pablo Palacio. Jonathan Davidoff Psychoanalysis Unit Division of Psychology and Language Sciences University College London 2 ‘I Jonathan Davidoff Menasse, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis.’ 3 4 Acknowledgements The limits of language and knowledge of a doctoral research are difficult to trace and therefore its indebtedness is not completely acknowledgeable to begin with. I would like to thank in the same way, without traceable limits, my professors, teachers, supervisors, analysts and guides, recent and not so recent, who lovingly and insistently have seen me through so much saying and writing. I would like to extend my gratitude to those who have so kindly fostered the space for that saying and writing, wittingly and unwittingly. I have in mind those people, whose company, presence, absence and support inhabit the chapters of this research. I am thinking of those who did not give up on me in the difficult moments - when my research chapters felt like too much or too little. Also, my gratitude goes to the people who, in specific moments of cleavage, lovingly chose to do that which enabled my road – alphabetically. I would like to thank my family, the people of whom I participate in the real, who day after day have shared with me the scriptless film, and have made it feel familiar. I would like to express appreciation for my colleagues from work for taking some of my allocated pot of daily grind just so I could undertake this research. My gratitude as ever to my friends, old and new, who are my chosen family. Finally, I simply would like to express my gratitude as gratitude; recognise and acknowledge my fortune for having had the opportunity to undertake my doctoral research. 5 Index Abstract 7 Introduction 9 Chapter I. Lacan’s Early Ideas on Psychosis 37 Chapter II: Lacan’s Late Ideas on Psychosis 75 Chapter III: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Madness 115 Chapter IV: Methodological Considerations I: Psychosis and 167 Literature – Scope and Limits Chapter V: methodological Considerations II: Literary Analysis 209 Introduction to Literary Analysis 243 Literary Analysis of Débora 253 Literary Analysis of Lateral Light 276 Literary Analysis of Women Gaze the Stars 293 Literary Analysis of the Anthropophagus 311 Literary Analysis of the One and Double Woman 327 Summary of Literary Analysis 345 Discussion 365 Appendix Translation of Débora 404 Translation of Lateral Light 451 Translation of Women Gaze the Stars 459 Translation of the Anthropophagus 467 Translation of the One and Double Woman 477 6 Abstract The linguistic attributes of psychosis described by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his early and late theories of psychosis point to a radical, unmediated and objectified relation between subject and signifier. In his third seminar in 1955, Lacan revisited psychosis and he posited it as a subjective structure alongside neurosis and perversion. Later, in his twenty-third seminar in 1975, Lacan revisited again the notion of psychosis positing it as a Borromean knot. Apropos, he examined some of the work of Irish writer James Joyce. His writing, argued Lacan, entailed dynamics such that prevented him from having a psychotic breakdown. Joyce’s mode of jouissance via his writing provided unity to his subjective structure. This rests, following Lacan, upon Joyce’s linguistic know-how (sinthome) which provided a symbolic space for imaginary, symbolic and real to be disjointed, and thus become joint. It follows that there ought to be linguistic and literary dynamics that, under this theoretical framework, are recognisable as psychotic. This research consists of a psychoanalytic-literary analysis of four short stories and a novel by Ecuadorian writer Pablo Palacio. The objective is to determine whether the linguistic and extralinguistic attributes of psychosis described by Lacan can be said to be at play in Palacio’s works and thus answer the question of whether psychotic attributes and dynamics can be extrapolated to other bodies of fictional literature. In turn, this research questions and aims to explore the contributions of such psychoanalytic-linguistic analysis of works of literature to the theory and practice of literary analysis or critique. What does it mean to interpret literature from this perspective and does it open literary meaning otherwise? 7 The findings of the literary analysis confirm that psychosis can be located in literary works under specific conceptual definitions of psychosis, literature, interpreting psychosis and the interpretable of the literary. The literary analysis yielded, furthermore, novel principles of characterisation of psychotic literary language that contribute to the understanding of the creative power of psychosis. Keywords: psychosis, language, psychoanalysis, literature, Jacques Lacan, Pablo Palacio. 8 Introduction Why psychosis and why literature? The fashion in which language is structured curves, expands or unsettles the kind of meaning it enables. In other words, the kind of play of language, understood as a structure, determines the fashion and kind of meaning that may be possible to open by means of it. The forms of meaning that may be possible and thinkable within language structured, for instance, psychotically may differ substantially to the ones possible within a neurotic or perverse structure. I am referring to the three possible forms in which according to Lacan subjectivity may be structured and therefore when I refer to ‘language’ in fact I am referring to the linguistic as well as the extralinguistic within human experience. Some aspects of the kind of meaning enabled by language within each structure must be specific only to them and different from the others. A way into an enquiry about language and therefore about subjectivity and its possible organisations is by asking what does language do in each of these structures or one in particular and compare it to the others. Asking, for instance, what does language do in psychosis presupposes that in psychosis meaning is opened, closed or articulated otherwise than in neurosis and perversion. It furthermore presupposes that subjective dynamics, mediated and enabled by language (broadly understood) may as well differ from neurotic and perverse ones. In other words, the dynamics of psychosis as a structure (i.e. its linguistic and extralinguistic characteristics, mechanisms and resulting phenomena) underpin the meaning of language, discourse 9 and subjectivity that are possible within and are unique to this structure. These must be comparable and contrastable to their neurotic and psychotic counterparts. Linguistic instantiations are needed to prove this true, yet every linguistic instantiation is contextual and therefore never ‘pure’ language. Literature, however, would be a good place from which to draw this ‘instantiation’ given that it amounts, following Roland Barthes, to the exercise of the linguistic symbol for its own sake (Barthes, 1977). Literary pieces, therefore, may be envisaged by their properties as autonomous linguistic entities. This rests upon the Barthesian assertion coupled with the Lacanian one about the symbolic in fact preceding and determining the subject (Lacan, 1960) which, although meant to highlight the paradoxical play of diachrony and synchrony in après-coup temporality, allows for an approach to a linguistic entity in itself and not as language proffered by ‘someone’ (i.e. work of literature as an autonomous linguistic artefact). Plenty has been argued about psychotic authors of literature, or the role of psychosis in literary creation, creativity in general and art. I explore to an extent these approaches to the topic across the chapters of this research. However, less has been researched about the kind of linguistic play, psychoanalytically described, of psychosis in specific pieces of literature taken as autonomous linguistic artefacts (i.e. instantiations of specific symbolic, imaginary and real dynamics). Equally, although plenty has been described and researched about psychosis within psychoanalysis, not enough attention has been paid to Lacan’s contention about psychosis comprising a relation between subject and signifier at its most radical (Lacan, 1955, 1956). Radical means, in short, a combination of the utmost immediacy and dislocation. Lacan’s 10 fascinating statement demands research attention and further understanding, which partly motivates my research. This research, in this sense, resides between literature and psychoanalysis as it aims to shed light on the linguistic and extralinguistic dynamics (i.e. symbolic, imaginary and real) of certain literary works of fiction. Consequently, this question presupposes to ask, for psychoanalysis, whether the phenomenological characterisation of psychosis advanced by Lacan, specifically in his third and twenty-third seminars can be used to characterise literary dynamics. Do these dynamics instantiate in works of fiction and what theoretical principles must be reformulated so they remain, to the extent possible, coherent, useful and descriptive of phenomena hitherto undescribed thus? In sum, “what does it mean to call a work of literature ‘psychotic’” is a question that I pursued throughout this research. These questions pose other ones about the contribution of this research to literature. What literary phenomena,

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