The Name-of-the-Father articulates the structure that gives rise to the subject, formed by the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. According to Lacan, the Father acquires respectability and authority by binding his name to a desire-causing object. We will therefore examine the intrinsic relation between the law and desire.

Ever since Deleuze and Guattari brought attention to it, Artaud’s concept of a “body without organs” (from his 1947 play To Have Done with the Judgment of God ) has been overused as a metaphor for individual and collective rebellion. Yet many other lessons remain in his “absolute materialism” and the painful, powerfully revolutionary conflict he waged with the pervasive presence of matter — from physical objects to the soul, thoughts, and even God.

How does the incorporation of the signifiers determining the subject and their sedimentation as letters take place? The expression “eating the book” borrowed and promoted by Lacan offers one approach to this question.

A Workshop with Nicolas Guérin and Manuel Hernández

The DSM tells us that child psychosis no longer exists. Structures are erased and replaced by symptoms, categorized into “disorders.” The “handicapped” child requires exclusively rehabilitative care. Through clinical examples, we'll see how, for psychoanalysis, the diagnosis of psychosis retains all its relevance, even if the identification of structures is complicated by the patient's age. Following the teachings of Freud and Lacan, we’ll find our way through the constitution of structure, of fantasy, and the place of the child in its relationship with the Other and with reality.

The phantasm responds to the question of the Other's desire, and thus the subject’s desire, by articulating subject and object, signifier and jouissance. It is a screen to the Real, and therefore crucially at stake at the end of the treatment, opening onto another mode of jouissance. Suggested readings