Delusions Scrutinized

Abstract

This chapter explores how Lacan characterizes delusions qua speech event. I will show how his method has a number of advantages over the content-based approaches, typical of most psychiatric studies of psychosis. Attention will be paid to metonymic disturbances situated at the basis of delusions, and their destabilizing effect at the level of subjectivity. I will examine Lacan’s notion of how foreclosure can be repaired by adopting a delusional metaphor that compensates for the absent paternal metaphor. I will argue that rather than providing a cure for psychosis, the creation of a delusional metaphor enables the subject to obtain symbolic consistency. With the aid of a delusional metaphor, questions on the existence of the subject no longer provoke debilitating perplexity, but lead to the creation of an alternative identity. However, before discussing metonymic disturbances and the delusional metaphor I first outline the way delusions are typically approached in psychiatry.