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Article: The moral psychotic: madness as excess.
- Article from:
- Critical Psychology
- Article date:
- October 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This paper presents an alternative tradition of politicising madness by understanding madness as an excess rather than a trauma. Excess, here, ultimately refers to the excessive jouissance of the Lacanian psychotic whose clinical structure this paper will outline, and it connotes a boundless intensity. The emphasis in this tradition is not upon madness as a trauma to be exorcised but rather as a way of being in its own right which is intelligible within its own terms and has insightful possibilities.
This tradition is grounded in the work of R.D. Laing which emphasises the intelligibility of madness and the particularity of the psychotic. The paper recovers ...