> The reason why Ken & other followers of Lacan & Zizek don't want to
> renounce the recourse to the use of the word "psychotic" must be that while
> they want a word that damns their objects of criticism, they can't bring
> themselves to using such words like "bad," "wrong," "untrue," "incorrect,"
> "ideological," etc. It would be very un-postmodern to suggest that there
> are such things as the distinction between "good" and "bad," that "true" is
> preferable to "false," and so on; it's also supremely un-postmodern to
> argue explicitly that the theory one is advancing is superior to & closer
> to truth than competing theories. Therefore, "psychotic" has to do the
> work of derogation for them. (Forget the effects of such usage on the
> mentally ill.)
That's completely untrue. I'll wager five posts from know you'll be using organic /medical metaphors - and I'm sure that you will, eventually, agree in the inherent correctness of such an approach, even if you don't happen to side with Lacan or Freud. It is ideological to think that in limiting our language, through the elimination of false conceptions alone, can change the way we think. Such a move simply amounts to shuffling around the deck chairs on the Titanic. I'm sure it helps, but it doesn't go far enough. Bad subjects are required to change our viewpoint, not the proverbial "good subjects" that permit the world to run just fine. It's simply wrong to assume the use of the term psychosis implies a further entrenchment in a lost postmodern world. Clinical terminology has an organic feel, an organic feel that is tied to the romantic elements in Marx: freedom and happiness. I hold these ideas to be prescriptively true, yet objectively false. I regard it as quite modern of me to maintain that suffering remains at the heart of all correct theory, and regard the discarding of such an aim to be thoroughly pathological.
And you still haven't answered the fundamental question surrounding psychosis: WHO THE FUCK IS SPEAKING! You can't simply say, "it's a chemical imbalance." Chemical imbalances don't tell people to toss their pets in the soup pot, it might be a contributing cause, but it is still filtered through psychical, linguistic and social processes / filters. That's TRUE, don't misunderstand me here.
And there has been a lot of noise here, from various positions, about the use of psychotic in social theory vs. clinical practice. First, the primary nay-sayers in this don't buy psychoanalysis in the first place - so they aren't really arguing that the term should be clinicalized, they're arguing that it should be written out of existence. Second, HAVE ALL OF YOU LOST YOUR MINDS? What do you think mediates psychotic breakdown? It sure as hell isn't a monadic individual living on an island. It can be, but 100% of the time it isn't. The cause of psychosis is *ground* in social interactions - the family, the economy, the legal system, religion, education (Althusser's ISAs). Freud explicitly stated that psychoanalysis *is* social psychology, lest we bloody well forget. Freud was very adamant about the paradox of psychoanalysis, that you can't "fix" people without "fixing" society. Why? BECAUSE SOCIETY IS NUTS (yes, another clinical term). If anything, psychosis and neurosis should *only* be applied to social logics and cultural tendencies.
There has also been some noise about the difference bewteen saying "You are psychotic" and "You are exhibiting psychotic symptoms." Well duh! What are you thinking? Wo Es war, soll Ich werden! (I must come to be, must assume its place, that place where 'it' was). If there has been a change, its because those "professional experts" have come to realize "THE 'i' DOES NOT EXIST" - it is a fabrication of the cogito and unconscious. So if you want to limit it to clinical use, fine, but then at least admit that the clinicians / psychiatrists (a modern profession if there ever was one) have recognized the truth of subjectivity living in an objective universe.
Furthermore, whas has really pierced my skin here is the blatant anti-humanism that is being exhibited. Psychoanalysis is about helping one another. It always has been. The clinical stuff is limited to conformity in most cases. And this is precisely what I am resisting here (wondering why there is resistance to resistance!)(how wonderfully Derridean). Limiting tools of a social theoretical trade to clinical work isn't just incoherent (as Freud well knew!) it's cruel. "Our society is too healthy to be 'diagnosed!'" How did *that* happen!!! How did everything get so sane, so rational, so healthy all of a sudden. The attempt to sterilize discourse is just another Heideggerian return to the jargon of authenticity.
As for the matter of stigmatization - you fools! (Lacan's term, not mine) - limiting the study of pathology to individuals *is* the dominant ideology of our times: fix them so they can go back to work without bringing a gun. It is a viewpoint *from* the perspective of the corporation (yeah, I'm lecturing on Althusser this week). Corporations celebrate the "new analysis" which focuses only on individual symptoms and selfish conformism. The classic recommendation of our times, "Got problems? Go shopping, you'll feel better" or "just work it off in the gym." From its original, psychoanalysis has *always* been about social theory. It is a tremendous failure of nerve to claw it back merely to the lab or the couch. Is anyone *seriously* going to entertain the idea that North American culture *isn't* narcissistic? Come on. And by using terms, neurotic, paranoid, psychotic and such to describe objective social processes, aren't we actually *destigmatizing* 'individual' (bah!) designations? - by shifting the responsibility away from the 'individual' to the collective?
Thank God I'm an atheist so I don't have to believe crap.
So - for the record - truth, falsehood, universality, correctness, objectivity, incorrectness, bad, good, wrong, appropriate, blahdy blah blah - yeah, they're all in there. Is is absolutely false to say that Zizek is a postmodernist. It is incorrect to say that Lacan is postmodern. It is untrue to claim that Althusser is postmodern. Zizek is a post-structuralist, Lacan an psychoanalyst, and Althusser a dialectical Marxist structuralist.
mad, ken
"Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse"
L.L.