Lacan defines psychosis in terms of the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father and the hole this creates in the chain of significations. As he puts it, "Something primordial regarding the subject's being does not enter into symbolization and is not repressed, but rejected" ( 81). Because the Nameof-the-Father or master signifier stabilizes and makes possible language and signification as such, in its absence there is chaos. The psychotic responds to this hole, this chaos, in various ways. He may afirm, emphatically, another other. Most of us are familiar with paranoia as positing an other behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Often, this other remains mysterious, enigmatic ( 194). This comes as no surprise given the absence of a way to hold the signifyg chain together. The lack of such an anchoring point perpetually stimulates the efort to find meaning.
To compensate for the hole in the symbolic, the psychotic turns to the imaginary. La can refers to a "captivating image" ( 204). The psychotic f� tens on this image, positioning himself in relation to it. Insofar as this relation remains at the level of the imaginary, it is not a symbolic relation capable of anchoring meaning or ofering a clear degree of separation between the subject and the other. On the contrary, precisely because the relation is on the imaginary plane, it is characterized by fear, rivalryj and aggression (2os) . The psychotic enters into a rivalrous game with the imaginary other, a game of deception and deceit that turns his world into a kind of phantasmagoria, an uncertain terrain where nothing is as it seems and everything is permeated by meaning and significance ( 69). The psychotic may try to mimic the conformist behaviors of those around him as he grapples with the intensity of his fears and of this rivalry. He may seek to avoid confronting his awareness of the power and aggression, but as his psychosis ·becomes more acute, he wil be less able to deny the obscene intrusions of power that surround him.
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