Ordinary Psychosis

in the era of the sinthome and semblant  

Thomas Svolos

We may first place Ordinary Psychosis in a diachronic sense within the work of Lacan. The signifier “Ordinary Psychosis” is not one of Lacan’s, but of Jacques-Alain Miller, but the signifier and its conceptualization are linked to the last teachings of Lacan. First, we find Ordinary Psychosis articulated with the sinthome, from Seminar XXIII. Some analysts use Ordinary Psychosis to designate a psychosis without evidence of an acute break, or the extraordinary symptoms of a classic psychosis, in the model of Schreber. In this context, analysts use Lacan’s sinthome to articulate a psychic stabilization, that holds psychic structure together, as Lacan did with Joyce, where his ego, his writing, repaired a deficit in Joyce’s Imaginary presumed from the bodily disturbance described in Stephen Hero. This has led to a debate: is Joyce an Ordinary Psychotic?