Structures in Psychoanalysis: Neurosis, Psychosis,

and Perversion

Lacan’s retour à Freud is a project which raises Freud from the

subject to the social, the linguistic, through the structuralisation
of this very subject. This is necessary, for Lacan, as the dimension
of truth emerges within the appearance of language. For Lacan,
and Freud first recognised the presence of these structures yet
was unable to give a systematic account of which, there are
fundamental types of structures which correspond to clinical or
social behaviours — namely, neurosis, psychosis, and perversion,
and their corresponding functions of repression, foreclosure, and
disavowal.

Freud’s clinical cases represent the first attempts at producing a

theory of neurosis; however, Freud is not consistent in his
application of the term, and is ultimately unable to provide a
structural account of the subject in order to properly identify the
neurotic, and the non-neurotic subject. This is the point from
which Lacan offers his account of the subject through returning to
Hegel, and reinvigorating Saussure, and the basis of which is a
certain prohibition, or castration.

This essay will ultimately serve as a summarisation of notes on

the ideas of Freud and Lacan on these psychic structures, and
how they relate to, and differ from one another.
Fuseli’s ‘Oedipus Cursing His Son Polynices’ (1786)

Castration and the Castration Complex

Upon entry into language one must accept a prohibition, or

castration — the prohibition of not speaking. That is, one cannot
return to the pre-linguistic subject, like Adam and Eve being
expelled from the Garden of Eden — once they realise that there
is something outside, they cannot return. Here there emerges the
split between the linguistic, social subject, and the pre-linguistic,
‘original’ subject, which is constitutive of subjectivity itself.
Lacan’s famous dictum, ‘The unconscious is [structured like] a
language’, reflects the linguistic structural split between signified
and signifier (which is imbibed with meaning). The neurotic
subject, accordingly, is constantly split between physical, pre-
linguistic, instinctual urges, and symbolic, linguistic, abstract
constraints as imposed by the Oedipal law, as socially required.
This may be considered normal for the development of the child.
In this way, every subject is in some way a neurotic. But when
this goes wrong, the psychotic emerges, through a failure to
integrate the reality of the impossibility of total satisfaction of
desire.

Sexuality involves this impossibility, and as such, to attain some

satisfaction, i.e. to live ‘normally’, one must renounce the fantasy
of total satisfaction. But this renunciation is a castration — a
castration of enjoyment — yet castration is the condition for
satisfaction. Freud thus originally develops the castration
complex along the lines of sex.

For Freud, the child’s phallocentrism means that the boy assumes
the possession of a penis for everybody, including the girl. Thus,
when the male child sees the woman without a penis, she is
lacking, she is castrated. From such, the boy becomes subject to
an anxiety of castration out of his possession of the penis, whilst
the girl becomes disillusioned out of her lack of the penis. The boy
gives up his fantasy of the sexual relationship with the mother out
of fear of the perceived threat of castration from the father — his
narcissistic investment in the penis leads him to give up this
fantasy. The girl’s disillusionment is a recognition of the value
placed in the penis from which emerges an unconsciously
persisting ‘penis envy’. The castration complex is thus the
‘necessary structural foundation from which a subject can take
part in the world of sexual desire’. Only from this position of
renunciation of the incestuous object, of the prohibition of the
sexual relationship with the primordial object of the mother, can
the subject seek a new sexual partner from the rupture of this
new lack. The desire of the child is oriented by the threat of the
Oedipal law, and its subsequent prohibition, with the threat of
physical loss (of the mother, the penis) replaced by a more
tolerable threat of symbolic loss (the phallus). The boy and girl
shame the same primordial/original object of the mother, but the
castration complex takes greater hold in the boy:

‘There is something problematic in woman’s relation to castration

and to the Oedipal law, due to the girl only partially being able to
resolve her Oedipus complex. This is because she is not as
vulnerable to the threat of losing a penis that she does not have.
The girl’s vulnerability shows itself in an anxiety related to the
loss of love.’

The imposition of the Oedipal law for the boy introduces the
internal threat of the superego, by which the need for the law of
the father is no longer, and consequently, castration marks the
deterioration of the Oedipus complex for the boy.

The girl, conversely, internalises, and represses the Oedipal

construct. One day, she will transfer her love to the one she sees
as possessing the phallus, coming to eventually replace the
phallus of the boy, or father, with the child, such that phallus =
child. Freud outlines three general outcomes for the girl here.
The girl may totally reject sexuality altogether, and stave off any
advances whatsoever. Or the girl may instead assume the
masculine position in their advances, and thus reject penis envy.
Or the girl rejects sexuality in favour of motherhood, in which the
child comes to be the phallus. The boy lives in fear of castration,
whilst the girl endures penis envy, and as such, both reject
femininity, yet the subject is feminine, as Lacan recognises, and
thus amounts to a rejection of the self as subject.

The late Freud thus begins to recognise the significance of the

structural subject. The castration complex comes to structure the
subject. The ego, confronted with the reality of the potential loss
(of the mother as primordial objects) splits, and this loss is
accordingly affirmed through the construction of a fetish.

Lacan conceives of this moment of castration through the fantasy

of the mutilation of the penis through the fantastical image of the
fragmented which emerges out of the mirror stage and the
entrance into language, and the confrontation with the paternal
law, the Name of the Father. The Name of the Father is the
barrier to total satisfaction between the mother and the child, and
imposes the phallus as a signifier of lack. The mother does not
possess the phallus, and desires it elsewhere. The moment of
castration, as the disruption of the fantasy of total satisfaction,
‘orients the child and the mother beyond each other. This can be
seen in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

Lacan here lays out three distinct moments according to his

registers (the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real) in order to properly
understand castration, and thus properly understand the
structure of neurosis.

Lacan lays out the distinction between here which is latent in

Freud, yet not properly drawn out, and which escaped Jung:

‘‘According to the Jungian schema, psychic interest comes and

goes, goes out, comes back, colours, etc. It drowns the libido in
the universal magma which will be the basis of the world’s
constitution. […] It’s a pretty metaphor, but it throws no light on
practice, as Freud underlines. It does not allow one to grasp the
differences that there might be between a directed, sublimated
retreat of interest in the world which the anchorite may achieve,
and that of the schizophrenic, whose result is however
structurally quite distinct, since the subject discovers that he is
completely stuck.’

The introduction of the Symbolic allows Lacan to break out of the

conventional dyadic relationship between the ego of the analyst,
and the ego of the analysand, where Freud was unable to
distinguish between imaginary and symbolic castration, as this
relationship becomes threefold with the introduction of the Other.
As such, there is both a little other in the Imaginary which
structures the subject’s interpersonal relations, and a big Other in
the Symbolic on whose behalf the subject acts. In the clinical
case, the analyst accordingly takes up the position of the Other.
Lacan thus takes the phallus as the imaginary object between the
mother and child, which structures signification, which is distinct
from the real penis. As such, the lack in the mother (of the
phallus) is not a real lack, but an imaginary lack, and whilst Freud
grounds castration in the perception of the absence of the penis,
Lacan does so in the realisation of the absence of the phallus in
the Other. The object may thus lack in different ways in alignment
with these registers. In the first of which, frustration, the
imaginary lack of the real object (the penis for the girl, the breast
for the child) of the symbolic mother instigates the imaginary
injury. In the second of which, privation, the real lack of the
symbolic object (the signifying phallus, the substituted child) of
the imaginary father produces a hole in the Real, for nothing is
missing in the Real, and thus to symbolise in the Real is purely
symbolic (and thus not real). In the final way, castration, the
symbolic lack of the imaginary object (the imaginary phallus) for
the real father structures the Oedipal complex, and emerges a
symbolic debt under this paternal law.

Castration, for Lacan, thus, is instead a ‘function of the order of

the signifier in its connection with the cultural law that imposes
the sacrifice of jouissance, rather than as a purely psychical
phenomenon referring to fantasy or fear’. Castration is thus a
symptom of language which forces one to give up jouissance: the
subject must use the signifier if he is to speak, and once he has
spoken he cannot not speak, yet the signifier can never wholly
coincide with the thing itself, the signified, and thus there is
always a loss of the jouissance of the Other, where jouissance is
enjoyment that is not necessarily enjoyable. The castration of the
subject means that ‘jouissance has to be refused in order to be
attained on the inverse scale of the law of desire’. As such, the
phallus becomes the signifier of the symbolic castration, of the
rejection of total satisfaction of desire.

Thus, the Oedipal complex is no longer a myth, but a

structuralisation based in the difference in the relationship of
man and woman to the signifier. Hence, for Lacan, it is no longer
the woman who is lacking, but the man — he is subjected to the
signifier which denies him complete satisfaction, whilst the
woman is never able to integrate into the order of signification,
never fully subject to the phallic law. The man is subject to the
paternal law, the law of signifiers, and thus to symbolic
castration, and rather, only in the Imaginary does he appear to
possess the penis, whereas for Freud, the man possesses the
penis in reality, whilst the woman does not. The woman thus, as
the agent of incomplete castration, is the place of opening for a
feminine jouissance which complements the phallic jouissance.

Neurosis and Repression

The neurotic protests against this castration, and this is the
fundamental problematic which gives away to hysteria and
obsession. The neurotic represses their awareness of castration,
and the lack in the Other, and thus refuses to sacrifice his
castration on behalf of the jouissance of the Other.

The fantasy structure (which acts as a screen which projects a

more painful image in order to conceal the forthcoming traumatic
image) contains the imaginary function of castration, and comes
to affect either of the terms of the unconscious fantasy — the
subject for the obsessional, and the object for the hysteric. The
hysteric, out of their refusal to see the lack in the Other and thus
that in himself, maintains desire as a lack of satisfaction, eluding
himself as object. This rejection of the Subject makes the hysteric
present himself as objet a to the Other, blaming themselves for
his condition. The obsessional, conversely, denies desire in the
Other, and rejects the possibility of himself ceasing to be subject.
Hence, the obsessional rejects the Other in his pursuit of the objet
a, blaming the Other for his condition. The hysteric and
obsessional alike are subject to the incompleteness of the
castration, taking castration to be the demand of the Other, not
language itself. Hysteria, and obsession want to keep desire away
from the subject, postponing its recognition. In this way, the
significance of castration, and the ‘original’ moments it seals off,
is made evident. As children, we take our first steps in the world
in pursuit of our desire, yet this is never a neat process in which
we are marked by the failure to achieve total satisfaction of
desire. As such, neurosis is an extension of the ‘normal’
functioning of our original psychological means to confront desire
properly.

In the mirror stage, if the original subject is unable to recognise

the gaze of the mother, and her position as woman, hysteria
develops. The mother is unable to transfer what it means to be a
woman, and thus what a woman wants, i.e. the desire of the
woman. For this reason, the hysteric, for Freud, is often a woman.
This feminine subjectivity, which remains undetermined makes it
difficult for the subject to enter into the Symbolic without the
proper signification, and thus lives according to the desire to be
desired. Or if the original subject is captured in the primordial
fantasy of the mother, obsession develops. The subject becomes
overly attached to the comfort of the fantasy of absolute
enjoyment of the pre-Symbolic, i.e. the Imaginary, from which
develops a fear of the lack in the Other, i.e. contingency. This is
captured in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic in which the
obsessional neurotic assumes the position of the slave, the
position of non-confrontation with the dizzying anxiety of choice,
secretly despising the master / the agent of castration / the father.
The obsessional thus inhibits the fantasy of being already
symbolically dead out of this deadlock with the Symbolic, the
facticity of life, the anxiety of choice, the castration of the father,
the failure of total satisfaction of desire.

Lacan thus challenges Freud’s neurosis-normality distinction,

arguing that there cannot be such a normal position. The normal
position for Lacan thus is neurosis, and whilst Freud sees
neurosis as something to be done away with, Lacan sees it as a
fixed structure, and do away with neurosis is to leave a gap for
psychosis, or perversion. Thus, Lacanian treatment aims to not do
away with neurosis, but reposition the subject relative to which.

As such, the ‘structure of a neurosis is essentially a question’, a

question of being for the subject, and the content of this question
distinguishes the hysteric from the obsessional. For the hysteric,
this question is, ‘Am I a man or a woman?’, which we can see in
Joyce’s Ulysses. For the obsessional, this question is, ‘To be or not
to be?’, which is the central question of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
That is, the hysteric is concerned with one’s sexual identity,
whilst the obsessional is concerned with their existence and
contingency, and yet neither of their questions are resolveable via
the signifier.

In the retreat from reality into fantasy, the neurotic represses

certain thoughts, or memories. There is here a two-step between
the primary, and secondary repression for Freud. In the primary
repression, there is a ‘forgetting’ of something never conscious to
begin with, and this is the principal act which structures the
psyche. In the secondary repression, some idea, or perception
that was conscious is expelled from consciousness into the
unconscious. Lacan raises this to the level of language. In primal
repression, desire is alienated when articulated as demand. This
is the repression of the first signifier, yet this is not a specific act,
but a structural feature of language — its incompleteness, the
impossibility of articulating truth. Secondary repression, however,
is a specific act in which the signifier is omitted from the
signifying chain. This is the return of the repressed, which
reappears in a distorted form. Repression thus does not destroy
these thoughts, memories, ideas, or perceptions, but relegates
them to the unconscious, which may reappear in distorted form,
such as the symptom, dream, slip.

Psychosis and Foreclosure

The neurotic’s refusal to recognise this reality of language

becomes a recourse to fantasy, yet there is nothing of this
trajectory in the psychotic’s case. Once the psychotic rejects
reality, he cannot find any substitute in the Imaginary. The
psychotic is left only with language to reconstruct his world, and
therein must recognise the category of the Symbolic, whilst the
neurotic flees from which. And whilst the neurotic is aware of
their condition, the psychotic is not. Thus, the need to distinguish
between the Imaginary and Symbolic is made evident, for
otherwise one remains unable to distinguish between neurosis
and psychosis, which are colloquially often mistaken for one
another, and the subsequent need to move from Jung to Freud:

‘According to the Jungian schema, psychic interest comes and

goes, goes out, comes back, colours, etc. It drowns the libido in
the universal magma which will be the basis of the world’s
constitution. […] It’s a pretty metaphor, but it throws no light on
practice, as Freud underlines. It does not allow one to grasp the
differences that there might be between a directed, sublimated
retreat of interest in the world which the anchorite may achieve,
and that of the schizophrenic, whose result is however
structurally quite distinct, since the subject discovers that he is
completely stuck.’

Brought about by the foreclosure of the primordial signifier, the

Name-of-the-Father, the basis of signification, and which
structures subjects’ identities within the symbolic order, and
signifies the Oedipal prohibition. That is, the absence of the
symbolic father is what brings about psychosis. Prior to Freud,
psychosis was considered the marker of being beyond the limits
of understanding, and thus aimed to interpret the psychotic
phenomena as he did to the dream. However, for Lacan, placing
psychosis and neurosis on the same plane of interpretability fails
to account for the significance of their structural difference, as
expressed by their different defence mechanisms.

In the case of psychosis the ego rejects the incompatible idea,

thought, memory, or image with its affect, and behaves as though
the idea, thought, memory, or image had never occurred to the
ego in the first place. This differs from neurosis, in which the
traumatic element is expelled from consciousness into the
unconscious, to only reappear at some point in its distorted form.
In the case of psychosis, the traumatic element is expelled from
the very unconscious. Some element is rejected outside the
symbolic order as if it never existed, and this is the foreclosure of
the psychotic subject. When the Name-of-the-Father is foreclosed,
it leaves a gap in the Symbolic which cannot be filled. When the
foreclosed Name-of-the-Father reappears in the Real, the subject
is unable to assimilate it. As such, the impossible admission of the
paternal signifier brings about the symptoms of psychosis, such
as hallucination, and delusion.

For Freud, both neurosis and psychosis involve a withdrawal of

investment in objects. In neurosis, investment is retained, but
invested in fantasised objects. And in psychosis, withdrawn
investment is invested in the ego, at the expense of investment
into fantasy, and the libido is put in opposition to the ego, from
which their delusions are constructed. Whilst for Lacan, however,
psychosis operates as a distinct structure, in which the
foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father means that the paternal
law is not integrated into their symbolic world, leaving a gap. This
gap in the Symbolic marks the failure to impose the Oedipus
complex, and as such, the paternal function is reduced to an
image of the father. That is, the symbolic (law) is reduced to the
imaginary (figure of law). There is some reorientation also
between the Imaginary and Real in that ‘the problem lies not in
the reality that is lost, but in that which takes its place’, in which
the imaginary world is put into the position of the external world.

Perversion and Disavowal

And finally, the case of perversion. Freud first considered
perversion in the standard way — sexual behaviour which does
not fit within the constraints and norms of heterosexual
intercourse. But Freud’s conception of perversion is at odds with
his notion of the polymorphous perversity of all sexuality,
grounded in the absence of any natural primordial order onto
which sexuality can be tethered. Lacan thus redefines perversion
along structural lines, rather than Freud’s behaviour lines, just as
he did with psychosis and neurosis, and thus the structuralist
kernel of Lacan’s project is made obvious. That is, perversion isn’t
a social, natural, or moral category, but something more
fundamental to the condition of the perverted subject. However,
perverse acts (in relation to social norms) remain possible outside
of the perverse structure, and likewise, a perverse subject may
never commit a perverse act, and even if the acts of the perverse
subject become socially accepted, the structure of perversion
remains.

Rather, this conflict with the Law, the Name-of-the-Father is

neurotic. The pervert knows the letter of the Law, that is, what
the Other desires, and obeys the paternal prohibition of
enjoyment — to not enjoy. The pervert as subject positions himself
as object of the drive, the means of the jouissance of the Other,
and thus does not act for his own pleasure, but the enjoyment of
the big Other, and finds his own enjoyment in this becoming-
instrument to the desire of the Other. It is in this way that Lacan
considers the homosexual in Ancient Grece (or in more socially
liberal places today) to be a pervert — not because of social
approval or disapproval, but because of the failure to obey the
requirements of the Oedipal law.

The way out of this deadlock between desire and Law is to make
‘desire the law of his acts’. Perversion then comes to be
structured like the inverse of neurosis: the neurotic is structured
by a question, but the pervert is so through the very lack of such a
question. Accordingly, the pervert does not doubt that he acts on
behalf of the jouissance of the Other. And the pervert survives not
through repression or foreclosure, but through disavowal, namely
fetishistic disavowal. The pervert disavows castration as he both
takes the mother to be lacking the phallus, whilst being unable to
integrate the reality of this traumatic reveal. The fetish arises as a
symbolic substitute for the missing phallus, and becomes a
phantasmatic screen which prevents confrontation with the
Thing.

In the case of disavowal, the perverted subject refuses to

recognise the reality of their traumatic perception, such as that of
the lack of the mother. In the case of the original recognition that
the girl does not possess the penis, or the realisation of the
absence of the imaginary phallus, they disavow this perception,
and its reality, and continue to believe that they see the penis in
the girl. Yet as the complete detachment of the ego from reality is
difficult, the pervert maintains some sense of belief in its opposite
(that the woman really is lacking), and this marks the splitting of
the ego. That is, the pervert must first recognise the perception in
order to deny it. As such, disavowal is a means of responding to
the castration of the Other, for whilst the neurotic represses their
realisation of the lack, and the psychotic acts as though the
realisation had never occurred to them at all, the pervert
disavows the reality of their perception in service of the Other.
For Lacan, the ultimate traumatic perception is that the cause of
desire is always such a lack, and thus, disavowal is the failure to
accept this, and rather wants to maintain that desire is rather
maintained by a presence, as he retreats to the fetish.

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