The psychotic subject has no question: in place of the question that the neurotic subject might present with - "Am I a man or a woman?" Or, "Am I dead or alive?" - the psychotic subject is concerned not with questioning the world, but with holding the world together. Freud proposed that for the psychotic subject, the delusion is not the crisis, but rather, the delusion is the solution to a crisis. The analyst seeks to understand the correlates of the delusion, not in order to question the psychotic subject’s position in the world, but, rather to find ways to help the subject hold the world - or their delusion about the world - together.
However, if the psychotic subject does not present with a question, the psychotic subject nevertheless raises a question: if we know that the psychotic subject’s view of the world is deluded, how do we know that the analyst’s view of the world is not?
In short, is there an objective reality? More specifically, is there such a thing as ‘objective reality’ within the theoretical framework that Lacan invites us to consider? The principle of objective reality holds that there is a world that exists independent of any conscious observer.
In contrast, in opposition, or perhaps in a complementary position to objective reality, there is subjective reality. Subjective reality is the quality of conscious experience by which a person has the perception that events are happening to them, from which they interpret the idea of a “self". The experiencing "self" is the only entity that has access to these processes of perception and interpretation, and the experience cannot be studied objectively by an outside observer.
Psychoanalysts appear not to enter into the discussion about whether or not there is an objective reality, however, I wonder if we can ask if there are a series of assumptions in the work of Lacan that point to an acknowledgement of objective reality.
The argument for an objective reality is that existence has primacy: existence comes before consciousness. Before you can begin to sense the world, have feelings and form thoughts you must exist. It is possible to fit, I think Wilfred Bion’s 1962 "A Theory of Thinking" into this framework, and it would go something like this: before you can experience frustration, have a thought, and thus learn how to think - you must actually exist. My question is, can we fit Lacan’s theory of the subject into an objective framework, or not? Can we find objective reality in Lacan, or not?
There is even a branch of philosophy that defines the problem of primacy as so essential that the philosophy is, rather provocatively, named after it. It’s called Objectivism. It originated with the thinking of Ayn Rand. Objectivist philosophy argues that there is a metaphysical world that exists independent of a conscious observer, and, furthermore, that the conscious observer can directly apprehend what exists. It argues that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving an object, not of creating an object or changing it.
Not everyone, however, agrees with the primacy of existence. In fact, the idea that conscious observers can directly apprehend what exists appears to be highly contentious. Many people argue instead for the primacy of consciousness. Famous thinkers who expounded an argument for the primacy of consciousness include Plato and Descartes.
In Plato’s theory of forms, forms transcend the world of substances in which we live, and forms come before existence. It might be worth mentioning at this point that for Lacan, the language comes before the baby. In Seminar 3, Lacan considers the young child, playing the fort, da game. The child is, says Lacan, working at apprehending the symbol, but the symbol is already there! Lacan says, don’t forget that you are looking at the child! The language already exists all around the child, and it already exists around you. This surrounds and guides all your actions, including you watching the child, engaged with him. In the beginning was the word.
So, in the great and furious philosophical debate of primacy, existence vs consciousness, what does it mean to say language has primacy? In what camp, existence first or consciousness first, might we try to locate Lacan?
In my ferocious but too shallow reading for this paper, I was struck by the thinking of eighteenth-century philosopher Immanual Kant. He drew a clear distinction between the form appearing in the mind—what he called the phenomenon (a Greek word meaning "that which appears to be")—and the world that gives rise to this perception, which he called the noumenon (meaning “that which is apprehended"). All we know, Kant insisted, is the phenomenon. The noumenon, the “thing-in-itself,” remains forever beyond our knowing. This is not the position of saying “nothing exists apart from our perceptions” (which, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of philosophy, is called ‘subjective idealism’, and is a position attributed to George Berkeley, philosopher and theologian.)
Kant held that there is an underlying reality, but we never know it directly. All we can ever know of it is the form that appears in the mind—our mental model of what is "out there". When I first read this -in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of philosophy - it made a lot of sense. However, I woke up later that night with a sense of unease. It was as if I had dreamt of an erudite, thinking figure, shaking their fist at me, saying “but how do you know that there is an underlying reality if you cannot actually perceive it?” The erudite figure might have been George Berkeley, the subjective idealist, or it might have been Ayn Rand, the objective philosopher.
To the beginner's mind - this beginner's mind lest I commit an error of both assumption and identity - psychoanalysis neatly sidesteps the philosophical question of what is reality and can we perceive it. The analyst says simply ‘it is a question of the subject’s desire.’
The thesis I want to present is that the psychotic structure as a concept, and as encountered in practice, reveals that there is a place from objective reality in psychoanalysis, that field which gives so much consideration to understanding subjective experience. .
In Seminar IV, Lacan posits the symbolic father, the imaginary father, and the real father. The analyst in formation can become utterly immersed in the pleasure of understanding this distinction between the symbolic father - castration - the imaginary father - frustration - and the real father - privation - as they contemplate the formation of the subject. However, the question, “who or what is the actual father?” droppeth from heaven like a burning thunderbolt. The subject cannot answer this question outside of their own subjectivity; nor can the actual father. The actual father, if you happened to bump into them, and if they happened to tell you about themselves, would no doubt describe themselves very differently to the description of them made by your analysand. The analyst in formation must flip backwards through the pages looking again at the definition of subject and Other. There is not much written about what is actual on these pages.
Earlier this year, a debate erupted amongst the ACP students about the hypothetical subject who believes they are a pink elephant, and whether this is any different to the subject who believes they are a bad speaker, or a good runner. Some of the tolerant voices in the debate extended the opinion that it doesn’t really matter if a patient believes they are a pink elephant; as long as the subject is happy with this identification, then what is the problem?
I beg to differ: roaming through the parks of Melbourne, uprooting trees, and trying to feed yourself indigestible foods with a trunk that you don’t have could become a problem, but then again, maybe pink elephants don’t behave like ordinary, grey Asiatic elephants. There’s a lot that I don’t know.
In the end, an ACP student with AI programming skills wrote an algorithm asking their computer to create an impressionist painting of the psychoanalytic treatment of a pink elephant. Interestingly, the algorithm generated a painting of a pink elephant on a couch sitting opposite a man with a white beard dressed in a brown suit. It is interesting that an AI algorithm puts back into the picture what faculties of psychology all around Australia are determined to keep out. I’m talking about Freud, rather than the elephant.
That the students found themselves in something bordering absurdist theatre speaks to a conceptual difficulty: what is objectively real? It’s not an easy question to answer; it’s difficult to set the parameters and formulate the question. It’s easier to dismiss the question altogether.
Yet there is an elephant in the room here. It’s not that the patient is quite obviously not a pink elephant, but rather, that the analyst KNOWS that the patient is not a pink elephant: the analyst knows that what this hypothetical pink elphant patient believes about themselves is a delusion.
The elephant in the room is objective reality.
The psychoanalytic position on the subject who believes they are a pink elephant - delusional - and the subject who believes they are a good runner or a bad speaker - various subjective interpretations - is I want to argue, a statement that admits that there is a qualitative difference between delusion and mere opinion.
In Seminar III Lacan posits the importance of the signifying chain, as that which orders reality. ‘The reality with which we are concerned is upheld, woven through, constituted by a tress of signifiers.’ Most importantly for how I have set out this argument - or rather my own confusion - is that Lacan argues that reality is located at the level of the language phenomenon. Reality is located at the level at which the signifier conveys meaning, not at the sensory level of the phenomenon. Lacan draws upon Ferdinand de Saussaure’s structural theory of language. The signifier is the representation. The signified is that which the signifier attempts to represent - not the actual thing or object, but rather the meaning of the thing. Lacan adds an important qualifier to Saussaure’s theory. ‘The system of language never results in an index finger directly pointing to an element of reality. The signified is not the things in their raw state, already there given in an order open to meaning.’
The relationship between the signified and the signifier in any given subject always appears fluid, always ready to become undone, says Lacan. In the psychotic experience, the signifier and the signified present themselves in completely divided form. In the non-psychotic subject, what is signified changes, beneath the signifier, as the subject develops, or perhaps as society changes.
As a beginner, I wonder what happened to Saussaure’s idea of a referent - the actual objective thing? Saussaure, as I understand it, originally presented not just the signifier and the signified, but also the referent. Unless I missed it, Lacan leaves the referent out of the picture and focuses on the relationship between the signifier and the signified. Is this a denial of the referent, or is this a theory that proceeds off the assumption that the actual objective thing already exists, and that only a student with shaky foundations would go looking for what everyone else already knows is there.
Why does this matter? Why does my scholastic confusion about reality matter at all? We don’t need to go around seeking confirmation of objective reality in order to get on with life, or to invite a patient onto a couch and listen to them speak.
It matters from an ethical point of view. If delusion is understood purely as the subject’s relationship with language, then then what is mad or psychotic or delusional is simply that which you believe but that your neighbour does not.
Lonely, too restricted? That’s okay, just change your neighborhood. If enough people believe it - like the idea that Lazarus rose from the dead - then it’s not a delusion, it is reality.
In Seminar III, Lacan says that the subject’s initial apprehension of reality is a judgement of existence which consists in saying this is not my dream or hallucination or representation, but an object. Does he mean the object that exists through language consensus, or is he referring to a referent, something related in what is objectively there?
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