Causality in Psychosis

The first session is constructed around Lacan’s 1946 paper with the title ‘A Presentation on Psychical Causality’.

My main thesis is Lacan had two sources to draw on with respect to causality in psychosis, a ‘de Clérambault/Capgras source and a Freud source. I think it could have been the first source that led him to a fascination in Freud’s Verwerfung which is part of his second source. There is a short paragraph in the 1946 paper on p. 135: ‘What then is (the phenomenon of) delusional belief’? I say that it is misrecognition with everything this term brings with it by way of an essential antinomy. For to misrecognise presupposes recognition as is seen in systematic misrecognition, in which case we must certainly admit that what is denied is in some way recognised.’ I consider this paragraph the cemetery in which the mechanism that Lacan calls méconnaissance systématique is buried. Also de Clérambault/Capgras are buried here under the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

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