Research

 

 

Working papers

 

"Overview of Contemporary Lacanian Diagnostic Categories of the Psychosies: Autism, Schizophrenia, Paranoia, Melancholia and Manic-Depressive Psychosis."

 

"The Treatment of Psychosis in Institutional Spaces: From Psychoanalysis to Architecture."

 

Research project

 

I am presently occupied with reseach on psychosis that will combine my interest in philosophy as well as psychoanalytic theory and practice. Psychosis is a widely discussed mental condition among psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians. Freud’s own intellectual development owes a great deal to the advancements he was able to make on the basis of work done with psychotic patients. This may be even truer of Lacan whose PhD dissertation centred on the question concerning the paranoid psychoses and who subsequently devoted many seminars, conferences and written texts to this question. Likewise, the contemporary Lacanian world is absolutely fascinated with the questions psychosis poses psychoanalysis today. My own interest in this question has led me to spend time as an internet at the “388” (a centre for the psychoanalytic treatment of the psychoses) in Quebec city where I learnt much on the aetiology, diagnosis and treatment of variousl forms of psychotic illness (paranoia, schizophrenia).

   

Contemporary continental (European) philosophy also bestows much importance to the question of psychosis. This is attested to by the work of Michel Foucault who dared to write a History of Madness arguing that Western thought had erected itself upon a foundation built on the violent rejection of madness. In Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari celebrate the “schizophrenic out for a walk” by contrast to the “neurotic on the couch” and Julia Kristeva praises the liberation of the pre-Oedipal drives in the schizophrenic body not yet sanitized by the symbolic law. More recent Lacanian inspired philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek have questioned this “postmodern” homage to psychosis.

 

My research regarding the vicissitudes of psychotic illness aims to tackle this question by paying attention to the developments made in psychoanalytic theory, contemporary philosophy as well as to the findings procured in my clinical practice and experience. The ideas developped in this research have been and will continue to be presented in the "Lacan Unpacked" course I am involved in teaching as part of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and Institute's Extension Program (see the list of my public talks).