Preface

Why this re-examination of the meta-psychological model?

The answer is directly linked to my original aim in writing this book; namely, to find a way of analysing the psychotic's relationship to discourse that would bring psychoanalytic practice closer to achieving the ambition of its project. As I proceeded, I realised, often to my own surprise, that certain questions that I thought had been resolved had become once again obscure, certain concepts that I believed to be no longer problematic had lost their apparent clarity. Unsurprisingly, psychosis forced me to rethink the conceptual models with which I approached the psyche. As a result, what was originally intended to be an introduction explaining the concepts used in my book came to occupy a large part of it—and the achievement of my original aim had to be postponed.

But this ‘postponed’ aim was and remains close enough to my thinking for it to be regarded as the backcloth on to which all my propositions have been woven. To forget this would make my chosen perspective, the possible value of my hypotheses, and the model proposed scarcely comprehensible. It is obvious that the aim of research affects the way in which it is carried out, the method adopted, the kind of questions asked. Although I have not been able at this stage in my work to carry my thinking on psychosis as far as I would have wished, nevertheless, taken as a whole, the book does represent an examination of psychosis or, rather, a way of examining the psyche that may enable us to confront the question of psychosis in a different way.

My long-standing debt to psychotic discourse is far from settled. It is thanks to that discourse, so often listened to, so often not understood, that I have finally lost any illusions as to the existence of a model whose application would no longer encounter ‘anomalies’: for this salutary reminder I can only offer in exchange the hope that my approach will make it possible for us to listen more sensitively, more attentiv