ELEGANT SOLUTIONS TO PSYCHOSIS
Abstract: In 1958, Lacan considered that the end of Schreber’s delusion revealed the lines of efficacy of an ‘elegant solution’. Although it is relatively common in Lacanian psychoanalysis to use the term ‘subjective solution’, Lacan’s original proposal has been little developed. Yet it is an interesting approach for the clinical treatment of psychotic subjects, given the contributions of sinthome theory and, more recently, work on ordinary psychosis. Based on the symptoms of ordinary psychosis, Jacques-Alain Miller evokes three clinical signs: bodily, social and subjective externalities, which also correspond to the symptoms of extraordinary psychosis. Taking these hypotheses into account, it is possible to envisage (self-)therapeutic solutions that approach symptomatology from the angle of invention rather than deficit, as Freud did with Schreber’s delusions. In this way, we emphasize the dynamic nature of clinical work with psychotic subjects, insofar as it bears witness to the various subjective elaborations that the psychoanalyst can support in refining the symptom.