in girls. In “The Infantile Genital Organization” (1961e), Freud said, “We know how children react to their first impressions of the absence of a penis. They disavow the fact and believe that they do see a penis, all the same. They gloss over the contradiction between observation and preconception by telling themselves that the penis is still small and will grow bigger” (143–44). Of course, in order for a hallucination of this kind to occur, the child—or, as the case may be, the psychotic—must, as Freud confirms, believe in it. In other words, the psychotic loss of reality is the consequence of (a) denial of an intolerable reality, and (b) adopting a delusional belief in its place. The denial of reality—the first step to psychosis—doesn’t in and of itself occasion psychotic symptoms. Step two—the subsequent delusion that attempts to “repair” the impact of step one—is actually the psychotic symptom, comprising a phantasy that, according to Freud, is inherently distressing, even persecutory. The delusion, then, is the key to psychosis. What is its ostensible purpose? Freud says that, “In regard to the genesis of delusions, a fair number of analyses have taught us that the delusion is found applied like a patch over the place where originally a rent had appeared in the ego’s relation to the external world” (1961g, 151).
The denial of reality—such as the hypothetical disavowal of her sister’s death, in the example Freud used—creates a “rent,” a hole, in the situation that the person is in. This hole, however, becomes intolerable. Although the neurotic is able to survive “gaps” in his memory, a world can’t so easily be maintained if the holes we inflict in it remain empty. They need to be replaced with something. But what? According to Freud, with a delusion, a “false belief” that becomes fixed—like a brick in a wall—in the place it becomes inserted, to insure that the “banished” reality stays banished. This is the step—the crucial step, it turns out—that Freud neglected to elaborate in his analogy of the woman whose sister was dying. Had she, as Freud speculated, disavowed her sister’s death as a way of avoiding a morally compromising attraction to her brother-in-law, she would have needed to follow this step with another in order to effect a psychosis, in order to insure that her denial would be safe from the encroachments of reality. For example, she might have adopted the delusion that her brother-in-law, the man whom she secretly loved, was conspiring to murder her sister. This type of delusion is consistent with the persecutory phantasies we frequently encounter in paranoia. In fact, Freud believed that the object of paranoid phantasies is the original object of one’s love. In his famous book on Judge Schreber, Freud’s only case study of psychosis, written in 1911, he said:
It appears that the person to whom the delusion ascribes so much power and influence, in whose hands all the threads of the conspiracy converge, is, if he [she] is definitely named, either identical with some one who played an equally important part in the patient’s emotional life before his illness, or is easily recognizable as a substitute for him. (1958f, 41)
This is why denial of reality, in and of itself, doesn’t comprise a psychosis. After all, denial isn’t an infrequent occurrence in neurosis. But if denial isn’t “supported” by a delusional accomplice, its survival is fragile. It remains open to refutation, in life as well as in treatment. In order to enter the domain of the truly “psychotic,” the piece of denied reality has to be “patched” with a delusion. But why is this delusion frequently—indeed, always—distressing? Freud proposed that
this fact is without doubt a sign that the whole process of remodelling is carried through against forces which oppose it violently. . . . On the model of a neurosis . . . we see that a reaction of anxiety sets in whenever the repressed instinct makes a thrust forward, and that the outcome of the conflict is only a compromise and does not provide complete satisfaction. Probably in a psychosis the rejected piece of reality constantly forces itself upon the mind, just as the repressed instinct does in a neurosis. (1961g, 186)
In other words, the neurotic and psychotic share similar aims and employ similar methods. Neurotics seek to protect their relationship with reality—epitomized by the object of their desire—by repressing their desire for that object. Psychotics, however, seek to protect their desire by remodelling the reality—either the object of desire or whoever assumes its place—which frustrates them. Either method—the neurotics’ or the psychotics’—keeps the conflict alive because, in fact, neither neurotics nor psychotics are prepared to “dissolve” their desire when they meet insurmountable frustration, by allowing themselves, according to Freud, to experience it. The (neurotics’) “repressed” desire returns in the form of a symptom because it’s never been wholeheartedly abandoned. Likewise, the psychotics’ “disavowed” reality persists in spite of having been remodelled, because the original object of desire—now rendered unconscious—wasn’t abandoned either. This “new” reality, in the form of a delusional phantasy, effectively replaces the original (internal) conflict with one that is “outside” of themselves, against which they are now embroiled. They become convinced, and need to feel convinced, that they’re being persecuted by someone to whom they’re attached.
This is best epitomized by delusional jealousy. The object of desire is protected from the aggression that jealousy always occasions by displacing it (the aggression) onto an intruder. Freud recognized that beneath this aggression was an attraction—but the object of that attraction has been repressed. Though the line between neurotic and psychotic jealousy is ambiguous, it can be understood in terms of the degree to which delusional jealousy is directed at someone who torments them, whether they are neurotic or psychotic. Whereas neurotics feel persecuted by their desire, psychotics feel persecuted by the object of their desire. In their experience, their relationship with that object is essentially tormenting. Recall how Freud accounted for our capacity to successfully “dissolve” the Oedipal complex, how “analyses seem to show that it is the experience of painful disappointment” (1961c, 173). In other words, our unwillingness to submit to the experience of disappointment arouses pathological defenses against it, whether these defenses are neurotic or psychotic. The acceptance of that disappointment—through one’s experience of it—enables us to accept the reality that we’re confronted with. While neurotics suppress a bit of “themselves” in their avoidance of disappointment, psychotics seek to disavow reality itself, “altering” it in elegant, though inevitably tormenting, symmetry.
As we saw in chapter 2, the tendency to disavow reality is supposed to begin with every child’s discovery that girls lack a penis or, alternately, that boys possess one. Children initially gloss over the apparent contradiction between their observation of the “missing penis” (in the case of the girl, the presence of a penis in boys) and the expectation—based on his preconception—of seeing one. The boy disavows the stark absence of the girl’s penis and “hallucinates” one instead. Yet, what is the reality in question? Is it the mere perception of the missing penis, which the child, horrified, disavows; or the child’s conception of what is lacking, fueled by his anticipatory imagination? Laplanche and Pontalis suggest:
If the disavowal of castration is the prototype—and perhaps even the origin—of the other kinds of disavowal of reality, we are forced to ask what Freud understands by the “reality” of castration or by the perception of this reality. If it is the woman’s “lack of a penis” that is disavowed, then it becomes difficult to talk in terms of perception of a reality, for an absence is not perceived as such, and it only becomes real in so far as it is related to a conceivable presence. If, on the other hand, it is castration itself which is repudiated, then the object of disavowal would not be a perception . . . but rather a theory designed to account for the facts. (1973, 120; emphasis added)
If psychotics can’t accept reality but choose, instead, to disavow and then remodel it with delusion and hallucination, what purpose does this “renovation” specifically serve? Wouldn’t they seek to obtain happiness because the reality they disavow is inherently frustrating? When psychotics resort to delusions and hallucinations to fend off—in fact, to change their idea and perception of—reality, to rearrange and remodel it, they do so, not to find alternate ways to achieve their desires but in order to protect themselves from them. But that isn’t enough.
