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THE QUESTION OF THE FATHER AND SEXUAL DISTURBANCES IN PSYCHOSIS
Author(s) -
O'Loughlin Elizabeth
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
british journal of psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.442
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1752-0118
pISSN - 0265-9883
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0118.2005.tb00262.x
Subject(s) - psychology , psychosis , psychoanalysis , subject (documents) , work (physics) , function (biology) , psychiatry , mechanical engineering , evolutionary biology , library science , computer science , engineering , biology
The first half of this paper attempts to track and to elaborate Freud's thesis on the mechanism proper to psychosis with particular attention paid to the case of Schreber. It is written emphasizing that Freud was only at the initial stages of his work on the function of the father and that this led to the stumbling blocks he encountered and left him dissatisfied with his work. The second half of the paper looks at the way in which Jacques Lacan took up Freud's work. It looks at how he used it to understand the structure of psychosis in a new way, giving the specific problems that arise in psychosis a central place in the practice of psychoanalysis. How is that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps, but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?… We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. (Jeanette Winterson 1987, back cover)