A Lacanian Explanation of Karon's and Villemoes's Successful Psychodynamic Approaches to Schizophrenia*

In this article I use Lacan's early theory of schizophrenia as corrected by the School of Leuven. Early in his career Lacan argued that schizophrenic people have a defective relation to language. Vergote and several of his students—all from Leuven—point out that schizophrenics also have a defective relation to their bodies. Lacan calls the defective relation to language a defect in the symbolic and he calls defective relations to the body a defect in the imaginary. Repairing defects in the symbolic requires introducing in the emotional life of the patient the paternal function of the law. Repairing the imaginary requires the more maternal help of mirroring, affirming, and holding. I underline that the two forms of healing that need to occur in the treatment of schizophrenics seem contradictory. I then proceed to demonstrate that two therapists, Bertram Karon—a non-Lacanian—and Palle Villemoes—a Lacanian—artfully combine the two contradictory strategies which are theoretically required. The remainder of the article is then devoted to a summary and a discussion of the different methods developed by these two therapists. I demonstrate that both do healing work at the imaginary level and the symbolic level. Sometimes these two therapists explicitly point out that they make a shift in their healing work with the patient; sometimes they do not alert the reader that they do so. I claim that in the work of both therapists it is the contradictory work at the level of the imaginary and of the symbolic that is healing, not the therapeutic intervention at the imaginary alone or at the symbolic alone.