Die Hauptstraße und der Vater-Signifikant
The main street and the father signifier

Summary/Abstract: This paper could be regarded as an effort towards a philosophical interpretation based on chapters XXIII to XXV of Seminar III – The Psychoses by Jacques Lacan. Itis structured following Lacan’s line of thought and argumentation as it can be traced in the afore mentioned chapters of Book III. Lacan aims at determining the specific markers of psychosis by a careful examination of the famous case of Daniel Paul Schreber, the distinguished German jurist from the 19th century who has gone mad. At the origin of the constitution of the subject’s psychic structure there is this fundamental, pre-linguistic experience of the rapport to the presence of the radical Other (A) - an experience which in turn determines the subject’s symbolic structure. Essentially there are two possible modes of positioning: the future subject can choose to put itself in a position of receptivity - this would be the Freudian Bejahung – or it can choose to radically reject this presence (the dimension of the signifier in its radical otherness) – this being the Freudian Verwerfung or the Lacanian foreclosure. In the latter case something as a psychotic structure emerges. A fundamental or a rather exceptional signifier has thus been rejected; in Schreber’s or any psychotic’s case it is the paternal signifier (Name-of-the-Father) as the principle of revelation, particularly the principle of procreation. The crucial moment of the triggering of (of) the Schreberian psychosis is when the subject finds itself confronted with a fundamental signifier, which emanates as an interpellation from the radical Other (A) but cannot be accommodated by an already established subjective structure.

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