Cormac Gallagher – The Patient as Actor: Notall in the Case Presentation

Issue 42 (Autumn 2009) Pages – 1-20

While the case presentation from Emil Kraepelin onwards has tended to obectify and medicalise the psychiatric patient, this paper argues that it was in his re-presentations at L’hôpital Sainte-Anne that Jacques Lacan best demonstrated the primacy of “saying” over “the said”. And Guy Le Gaufey’s rigorous critique of the formulae of sexuation is thought to offer a basis for the essential integration of the “notall” into the clinic and for situating the particularity of the patient in the transmission of psycho-analysis.

“Charcot‟s lectures … produced their effect primarily by their constant reference to the patients who were being demonstrated…. I sometimes come out, as from out of Nôtre-Dame, with an entirely new idea of perfection” (Sigmund Freud)….

Comments are closed.