Sujeito e psicose

Abstract

This thesis links psychoanalytical theory and clinical practice, which I understand as being the only way to develop knowledge in psychoanalysis. In this thesis I investigate the psychoanalytical concept of "subject", taking psychosis as a fruitful basis. The onset of a psychosis causes the breakdown of the structure by means of which the subject supported himself previously. Starting from this breakdown, however, a process of restoration is set in motion. In my work I seek to analyse the constitution, the disruption, and the reconstruction of the subject in psychosis. At the beginning, I report two analyses of psychotics, both attended at the Institute of Psychiatry ofthe Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The first of these subjects stayed in hospital for fifteen months, during which I could witness a process of dissolution. The second is an outpatient and seems to be on the way to stabilisation. On the basis of these two cases, I develop a theoretical approach in which I use: Freud's first topographical theory; the first period of Lacan's teaching, with an emphasis on the elementary cell of the Graph of the Wish and on the Schemes L, R, and I; and Lacan's theory of knots. Within this argument, the clinical cases are reintroduced and involved to the theory. Clinical practice always carries with it the dimension of the real, which is the core of the subject. This is the link I discuss in my thesis.