Paranoia

Dans l'introduction de son ouvrage "L'Âge des ombres. Complots, conspirations et sociétés secrètes" au XIXe siècle, Jean-Noël Tardy constate que le XIXe siècle est la période la plus riche en complots de toute l'histoire française. Des complots contre-révolutionnaires aux attentats anarchistes de la fin du siècle, en passant par les expériences de la charbonnerie française ou de la franc-maçonnerie, les conspirations se succèdent, souvent portées par des organisations clandestines. Ces événements suscitent un grand nombre de discours qui mêlent presque toujours, à l'analyse politique, une veine fictionnelle. Car les conspirations sont souvent autant une réalité qu'une inquiétude, un fantasme. L'existence attestée de sociétés secrètes aux buts politiques divers est relayée par la construction d'un imaginaire social foisonnant qui se cristallise autour du thème du complot et dont on connaît le succès jusqu'à nos jours, sous l'espèce des théories conspirationnistes.  C'est aux entrecroisements fictionnels et réels de cet imaginaire que nous nous proposons de réfléchir lors de cet atelier, selon plusieurs pistes d'analyses.

This essay compares Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" and Don DeLillo's "Underworld," by tracking the evolution of paranoia as a cultural pathology typical of the U.S.A. during the second half of the Twentieth century. By deconstructing the popular language of conspiracy theories, both novels testify to the passage from the polarized - and strategic - plot enforced during the Cold War, to a constant state of ironic and self-conscious "dietrologia" in the Nineties. In different ways Pynchon and DeLillo underline the loss of subjectivity in an age characterized by systems so complex that they defy any attempt to attribute individual responsibilities.

Cet article se propose d'esquisser une métapsychologie de la psychose en se focalisant uniquement sur la description des processus psychiques qui sont caractéristiques de chaque pathologie, ce qui permet de dégager leur logique propre, et de montrer à chaque fois la dimension spatiale ou temporelle dont le patient fait abstraction. En effet, les discours et les comportements de la psychose nous apparaissent souvent comme incohérents, et pourtant, ils suivent des processus psychiques qui sont à la fois logiques et spécifiques à chaque pathologie, tel est du moins ce que cet article se propose de montrer en s'appuyant sur des vignettes cliniques. Il s'agira de voir comment l'expérience mal acquise de l'espace et du temps conduit les patients psychotiques à suivre des logiques imaginaires, que les logiciens appellent aussi des logiques formelles, parce qu'elles ont la particularité de faire abstraction d'une dimension spatiale ou temporelle de l'expérience, tandis qu'en pareille situation, les patients névrosés suivent des logiques empiriques. Ainsi, chaque pathologie de la psychose suit une logique imaginaire qui lui est propre : le processus psychique spécifique à l'autisme suit une logique trivalente ou floue, celui de la schizophrénie suit une logique hypothétique ou non-monotone, celui de la paranoïa suit une logique répétitive ou fractale, et celui des troubles bipolaires suit une logique associative, ce que l'on appelle respectivement dans la clinique de la psychose l'indifférenciation, l'hallucination, la systématisation, et le discours logorrhéique du coq à l'âne.

The paper begins by analyzing the category of paranoia, evaluating it not simply from a pathological point of view (a Freudian one) and relating it instead to the one Patrick O'Donnell has called cultural paranoia: an interpretative category useful to highlight some common peculiarities of art expressions of the contemporary age. Specifically, the analysis of the emergence of a paranoid cognition in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 offers a passkey to the question about the definition of its author's poetics: paranoia, in fact, seems to work both like a theoretical device that undermines the process of knowledge formation in general, and like a reference to fiction formation itself. Pynchon's poetics, therefore, shows itself as openness to the possibility of a permanently opposed narration, compared to the one conveyed by the dominant power structures.

If we talk about the typology of personality, according to "Psychoanalytic Diagnostics" Nancy McWilliams, she identifies several leading types. In this article, consider the paranoid personality type. The article is based on the principle of gradual illumination of the main features of the type, its characteristics, signs, and features of the psychologist's work with it. The reader who is interested in self-development, self-knowledge, and the study of psychology will find in this article information about one of the personality types.

The term paranoia, taken up by Freud and Lacan, comes from the discourse of the psychiatric clinic. If we do not have a matheme of it, we have a formula, a saying from Lacan that he pronounced during a presentation of patients — paranoia is personality. It is himself that Lacan is echoing here, more specifically  the title of his dissertation Paranoid Psychosis and Its Relation to the Personality. Fifty years later, he no longer thought that there were some relationship but an equivalence between paranoia and personality.

The paper aims to reconsider the psychoanalytic concept of paranoia so as to apply it to a particular mass case of this disorder responsible for the symbolic construction of “Poland” and “Polish identity” – as exemplified in a 2014’s novel entitled Siódemka [Seven] by Ziemowit Szczerek, a prominent self-proclaimed analytic of Polish culture. Firstly, the paper concentrates on re-interpretation of Freud’s case study of Daniel Paul Schreber – in order to trace the zone of indistinguishability between literature and paranoia (since, as Freud claims, all paranoiacs say what they want to say, there is a clear parallel with the literary mode of expression). Furthermore, the paper draws on Jacques Lacan’s and Eric L. Santner’s investigation into the relation between the outburst of paranoia and the act of investiture. In order to account for this link, it is proposed to understand the onset of paranoia as a result of inability to cope with the dark implicit set of rules that govern practical functioning of the highest posts in the power structure. The paranoiac cannot transform his Big Other into this obscene set of rules and resorts to the imaginary order; s/he creates an imaginary entity (in case of Schreber it is God), which embodies pure obscene power. Thus paranoia allows to avoid the incoherence of the Big Other, because it supersedes it with a tyrannical and all-intrusive persecutor, whose existence is undeniable. The paper propounds that this “imaginary Other” personifies the obscene implicit rules of exerting power. As the symbolic order is replaced with the imaginary, true norms collapse into imaginary norms – irrational, severed from the normative system and demanding bare submission for the sake of submission. Finally, the paper applies thus re-interpreted concept of paranoia to Szczerek’s Seven in order to deduce that: (1) “Poland” as a construct represents the omnipresent and omnipotent imaginary Schreberian God, demanding unconditional submission, (2) it is simultaneously a subject of identification, (3) whenever it becomes a subject of identification, its ruthless demands and imaginary collapse of the symbolic are projected onto external enemies – namely Russia and Germany, (4) thus constructed “Poland” is built on a historical pact of repression, in which centuries of slavery practiced by Polish gentry were forgotten in order to artificially reconcile antagonist classes and unite them against a foreign enemy.

An article written for educational screen studies magazine Screen Education. This article investigates the narrative devices implemented by Polanski in his film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1971), with particular focus on the haunting and sinister themes portrayed, alongside the very personal tragedies faced by the filmmaker only years prior to the film's production.

[This book explains how to acquire a psychiatric illness. There are thousands of books on the market offering a variety of treatments, and laying down the rules for healthy living; however, they have all proved ineffective. This work, therefore, is a desperate attempt to contribute to people’s mental health by other means, taking into account the sometimes surprising designs of human intelligence. The interested reader will be confronted with a range of mental illnesses, their symptoms, and a detailed explanation of how to acquire them: a very easy task. Because what is difficult, is the treatment itself, not to mention the difficulty of keeping healthy in the midst of our complicated consumer civilization.]

Este livro explica como adquirir uma doença psiquiátrica. É uma tentativa desesperada de contribuir para a saúde mental das pessoas, uma vez admitida a ineficácia de milhares de livros que ensinam tratamentos e regras de vida saudável. Ao assumir este projecto, o autor aceita os surpreendentes desígnios da inteligência humana. O leitor interessado encontra aqui uma ampla variedade de doenças mentais, com os seus critérios diagnósticos, e uma detalhada explicação do modo de atingir esses objectivos. Tudo coisas fáceis, porque difícil é o tratamento, e mais difícil, ainda, é manter-se saudável no meio desta complicada civilização consumista.

Etwas am Wort Weltanschauung ist bekenntnishaft, es transportiert einen suggestiven Mehrwert, der nicht leicht zu erfassen ist. Adorno konstatiert in der Philosophischen Terminologie, dass es häufig mit einem Possessivpronomen versehen wird: "meine Weltanschauung". Im Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist die Freiheit nicht nur des religiösen, sondern auch des „weltanschaulichen Bekenntnisses“ verankert (Art. 4 GG); historisch und systematisch betrachtet ist der Begriff zudem in der Nachbarschaft von Wissenschaft und Ideologie anzusiedeln.
Jede eingehendere Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Kompositum muss sich mit dem aporetischen Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Geltungsanspruch, Relativismus und verabsolutierender Setzung befassen. Dabei handelt es sich bei dem Wort selbst um eine sehr deutsche Angelegenheit. Wie Angst, Besserwisser und Lebensraum, figuriert das Wort Weltanschauung als Lehnwort in zahlreichen anderen Sprachen; es zählt zu den sogenannten Intraduisibles; das Englische world view ist zu optisch, world concept wiederum zu konzeptuell. Es ist die Geschichte deutschsprachiger Philosophie sowie die politische Geschichte Deutschlands überhaupt, die den Ruhm wie die Infamie des Weltanschauungsbegriffs begründet haben.
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Aus der Verlagsankündigung des Lexikons:

"Weltgeschichte, Halbwelt, Weltanschauung: Es gibt keine Welt ohne Welt-Komposita. Das Lexikon entfaltet diese These in 57 Artikeln im Grenzbereich von Essay und Wortgeschichte.
Die Rede von der Welt ist in aller Munde, zumal angesichts der aktuellen Dynamik, die als fortgeschrittene ‚Globalisierung‘ begriffen wird. Besonders in der deutschen Sprache tritt das kleine Wort mit der großen Bedeutung häufig in zusammengesetzten Wörtern auf. Solche Welt-Komposita sind immer auch Verfahren, Welten – die es ja nicht an sich und je schon gibt – zu komponieren, und ihre genauere Analyse ermöglicht Einblicke in die Vielfalt der Kompositionsweisen."

What dark side characteristics do you have? How can you use them to get ahead? How can they hurt you? This presentation will help you to learn more about the dark side of personality, in particular the Dark Triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

The1964 play Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss easily lends itself to a psychoanalytic reading. The lead character called Marat is a paranoiac. The director of the play in this play-within-a-play is Sade, the notorious eighteenth century Marquis after whom is coined the psychological term Sadist. Weiss wrote in the aftermath of the holocaust and his plays represent the theatre of cruelty. The present analysis is a psychoanalytic study of the play, chiefly the character of Marat as a delusional in the lines of the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. Here the actor that is named Marat is looked at as suffering from paranoia, a madness/psychosis where he cannot be expected to play any roles. He is being himself and still effectively appears to imitate the legendary leader of the French Revolution Jean-Paul Marat.
Keywords: Peter Weiss, French Revolution, Paranoia, Jacques Lacan, Marat/Sade, psychoanalysis, The Theatre of Cruelty, Sadism, play-within-a-play

The present MA thesis focuses on the function of paranoia found in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon's novel is routinely considered one of the finest pieces of American fiction to emerge after World War II and no discussion of this book can avoid this topic. Its usage dates back to the time of Hippocrates and, after centuries of addition, the term paranoia is no longer confined to the medical community. After entering popular usage there is no consensus as to how this term is defined. It now possesses a sort of freedom that Pynchon routinely exploits.
Paranoia resists isolation in this text. The specific approach to understanding its function is dependent on three parts. First, the reader must identify the countless forms of paranoia spread throughout Gravity's Rainbow. Next, one must understand why a specific example from the novel represents a form of paranoia in Pynchon's fictional world. Finally, the reader then must recognize why an isolated form of paranoia is present and what Pynchon hopes to achieve through its presentation.
The paranoia found in Gravity's Rainbow has no fixed meaning. This is a conscious decision on the part of Pynchon and its central goal is to destabilize the entire narrative, which is a central part of paranoia's immense power regularly employed. Therefore, the function of paranoia within this novel first revolves around instability. It is an epidemic and understanding paranoia's function within this text enables the reader to understand the massive role it plays in what is regarded as one of the most important pieces of American literature to emerge post-World War II.
 

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a collective paranoia which is not only driven by our psychic anxiety but also mirrors the irrationality of the crisis and the failure of global governance. During such catastrophic times, in which the state has failed to create a sustainable civil society, scholars such as Melanie Klein, Silvan Tomkins, and Eve Sedgwick have theorized the ways in which we may turn paranoia away from its destructive tendency toward a reparative practice of relationship-building and collective action. I discuss the limits of a clinical approach to paranoia and propose a reparative practice of the global psyche toward social transformation, especially in relation to the rise of anti-Asian violence during the pandemic.

The Poetics of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature revisits the great American post-WWII, postmodern literary texts, namely Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 (1969), and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), to fuse high literary theory and criticism with the conception of PTSD symptomatology—and the historico-political developments that dictated the formation of PTSD symptoms and their corresponding literary tropes. For the first time since the portrayal of PTSD as a product of narrative discourses, The Poetics of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature performs an inverse exploration. By identifying key postmodern literary tropes as products of an overarching PTSD narrative paradigm, this accessible and concise study: identifies unexplored aspects of the canonical novels at hand, such as the link between individual and collective traumatization; introduces a novel way of examining trauma at the intersection of narrative, history, and medicine that will be of interest to literary scholars, students, and medical practitioners within narrative medicine alike; and recalibrates the importance of postmodern politics of transformation, while making the case for an aesthetics of trauma.

This article examines the 2015 film Ex Machina as a cultural text that exemplifies the technologization of gender within algorithmic culture. Analysing different textual elementsthe narrative diegesis, the marketing material, and the digital techniques used in the VFX post-production process-I argue that gender is consistently figured as a kind of technology. That is, gender is systematised, codified, and reduced to a programmed set of instructions that can be used by machines to manipulate and deceive. I argue that understanding gender through its figuration with the technological, specifically through code and algorithms, raises pertinent issues concerning surveillance, race, and bias. This is reflected in the film through a problematic representation of racialised figures, particularly techno-Orientalist tropes of labouring Asian bodies.

La visione del film “L’inquilino del terzo piano” può essere considerata una vera è propria esperienza all’interno del mondo paranoideo. Per buona parte del film qualsiasi spettatore non può fare altro che condividere con il protagonista il senso di inquietudine e angoscia verosimilmente provocati dall’ambiente grottesco. Tuttavia, durante lo sviluppo del film, l’atto identificativo che porta a parteggiare per Trelkovsky subisce un progressivo viraggio che sorge dalla presa di coscienza di essere dinanzi ad un caso di follia.
L’obbiettivo dell’elaborato sarà quello di osservare la qualità della patologia in tutto il sviluppo dalla fase premorbosa fino all’acuzie che determineranno il suicidio.  Dapprima verrà fornita un’analisi personologica di Trelkovsky per poi mostrare il cuore del disturbo generatore con l'appoggio delle teorie fenomenologiche e psicoanalitiche di riferimento.

Los críticos han destacado una serie de temas en la narrativa sabatiana: la descripción crítica histórica y social, los temas psicoanalíticos, los filosóficos (el existencialismo, el problema del mal y, en general, del hombre), la ceguera, etc. Pocos, sin embargo, han notado que entre las tres novelas existe una fuerte continuidad debida a la reiteración de las mismas obsesiones, y nadie la ha puesto de relieve mediante un análisis minucioso de las mismas. Esta continuidad que, puede observarse en muchos creadores, en el caso de Sábato está íntimamente relacionada con la reiteración de ciertos problemas psicológicos. El presente trabajo es un intento de demostrar que lo psicológico es lo central en la narrativa de Sábato. Más aun: que una buena parte de lo psicológico es de carácter patológico, y que la forma patológica de más peso es la paranoia. NB: En esta versión digital he corregido las erratas de la versión impresa de 1988.

English:
How are the movie screen and the emotions of the audience linked? And how can we write a history of this connection? This monograph tries to answer these questions by conceptualizing the film historical period of the New Hollywood as a moment of crisis which can neither be reduced to economic processes of adaptation nor to a canon of masterpieces. Rather, the detailed analysis of representative films makes visible the power of cinematic images to affect their viewers, that is: to confront them with the new. The films of the New Hollywood re-gauge the field of the old poetic divisions – as manifest in the classical genre system – and thereby irrevocably change the way moviegoers are affectively involved in the cinema. The book describes a complex interplay between three modes of affectivity – suspense, paranoia, and melancholy – which, each in its own way, entangle viewers in the contradictions of their affective relations with the world. On this theoretical basis the book devises a new conception of film history: as a history of feeling which can be rewritten up unto the present day.

Deutsch:
Woran bindet sich die Emotion des Zuschauers im Kino? Und wie lässt sich eine Geschichte dieser Bindung schreiben? Mit Blick auf diese Fragen konzipiert die Arbeit die filmhistorische Periode des New Hollywood als einen Moment der Krise, der sich weder auf ökonomisch bedingte Anpassungsprozesse noch auf eine Ansammlung von Meisterwerken reduzieren lässt. Vielmehr gelangt in der detaillierten Analyse repräsentativer Filme die Kraft filmischer Bilder in den Blick, ihre Zuschauer zu affizieren: sie mit dem Neuen zu konfrontieren. Die Filme des New Hollywood vermessen das Feld der alten poetischen Einteilungen – wie es sich im klassischen Genresystem manifestiert - radikal neu und verändern dadurch die Art und Weise, wie die Zuschauer im Kino affektiv adressiert werden. Die Arbeit beschreibt ein komplexes Zusammenspiel dreier filmischer Modi von Affektivität – Suspense, Paranoia und Melancholie – welche die Zuschauer auf je besondere Weise in die Widersprüche ihrer emotionalen Weltbezüge verwickeln. Auf dieser theoretischen Grundlage entwirft die Arbeit das Projekt einer Neukonzeption von Filmgeschichte: als eine Geschichte des Fühlens, die sich bis in die Gegenwart neu schreiben lässt.

In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon transposes the Oedipus myth from tragedy to comedy by changing the gender and developmental model of the Oedipus figure. Pynchon disavowed the novel as a failed experiment that documents his own forgetfulness. How does this ‘post-Oedipal’ forgetting relate to the novel's protagonist? What Oedipa Maas forgets to include in her search is herself. Pynchon might have partly disowned Lot 49 because it is reducible, in almost Lacanian contexts, to an overdetermined resolution. Though intercalated with numerous tangents, the narrative focuses on a once conventional suburban housewife who is ‘stripped’ of the men in her life and her old beliefs; more importantly, her once ‘normative’ sexual identity is also changing. Lot 49 is a notoriously elusive text because of its allusiveness; but it also remains opaque because it is difficult to locate the lesbianism that answers its riddle. Oedipa's revelation, developed with considerable dramatic irony, is that she has always been looking for the wrong gender. Lesbianism in the novel is situated as invisible, though it is hinted at everywhere from Remedios Varos' paintings to Oedipa's fumbling sexual encounters. What remains unclear is what Oedipa will do when the bidder reveals herself – when the empress not only has no clothes, but no Oedipal issues at all.

Close relation between paranoia and depression has been assumed by some theorists and supported by some research. Also, it has been proposed that self-esteem is important in this relation. The aim of this study was to explore differences in network structures which include both paranoid and dysphoric symptoms in people with low and high self-esteem (LSE and HSE). Network models present an alternative approach to psychological phenomena, within which constructs are observed as dynamical systems of variables rather than latent variables assessed using static observable indicators.
In this study, 164 participants (Mage = 20.93, SD = 1.98) filled the following self-report questionnaires: the Fenigstein Paranoia Scale, the Depression subscale of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES). Participants were allocated into two groups. The HSE group represented people who scored above average on the RSES, whereas the LSE group scored below average. Simple and partial correlations between the symptoms of paranoia and depression were calculated, based on which the association and concentration networks were plotted for both groups, respectively.
In the HSE group, the symptoms of paranoia were better clustered, with fewer central symptoms, whilst clusters of the depressive symptoms were weakly connected, and more distant to the paranoia symptoms. In the LSE group, the symptoms of depression seem to be more integrated and clustered than the symptoms of paranoia. Also, the symptoms of paranoia were less clearly clustered, but better connected with the symptoms of depression as indicated by positive low to medium correlations. Moreover, different groups had different symptoms that played a role in transferring activation from one cluster of symptoms to another (bridge symptoms). Different characteristics of two networks suggest that self-esteem can be a moderator of the interplay of paranoid and dysphoric indicators. This finding can have important theoretical implications about the role of self-esteem in the genesis of some mental disturbances.
One of a few interpretations of the greater density of the paranoia symptoms in the HSE group could be that they keep dysphoric symptoms sequestered, acting as a defence mechanism from depression and low self-esteem. In the same vein, in the LSE group, this mechanism does not operate so that in this group the depressive symptoms can be more easily activated by one another and can more easily trigger interpersonally sensitive interpretations. Practical implications can also be foretold regarding different therapeutic approaches with persons with HSE and LSE and mixed dysphoric and paranoid symptoms.​

Keywords: paranoia, depression, self-esteem, network approach

In 1966, in a paper on those who have influenced his work, Jacques Lacan suggested that his concept of ‘paranoid knowledge’ and his structural approach to psychoanalysis were closely linked to the work of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. This article examines both of these points. Starting with an introduction to de Clérambault, focusing on his concept ‘mental automatism,’ the link between ‘mental automatism’ and ‘paranoid knowledge’ is discussed. Loyalty to Henri Claude and conflicts around theoretical and clinical issues seem to lie at the basis of Lacan’s initial neglect of his conceptual indebtedness to de Clérambault. Second, the author discusses the presumed connection between mental automatism and Lacan’s structural psychoanalytic theory, which Lacan did not elaborate. It is argued that from a structural perspective, mental automatism comes down to a rupture in the continuity of the signifying chain, which provokes the disappearance of the subject. Furthermore, Lacan’s theory implies the hypothesis that manifestations of mental automatism are determined by a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, where questions related to existence cannot be addressed in a stable way. Lacanian theory thus retained de Clérambault’s notion of a rupture in mental life that lies at the basis of psychosis, but replaced his biological framework with the dimension of the subject as produced through speech.

In questo elaborato viene analizzato in chiave fenomenologica-psicodinamica l’episodio “The Entire History of You” del telefilm Black Mirror di Charlie Brooker, con l’obbiettivo di tratteggiare un quadro generale rispetto le fonti di ansia sociale odierne legate agli sviluppi della tecnologia. La distopia offerta è pragmatica e distintiva a tal proposito vengono valutate le dinamiche proposte nell’episodio componendo osservazioni sull’ingresso nel mercato di nuove tecnologie che potrebbero ribaltare completamente il paradigma esistenziale odierno. Considerando la tecnologia come un amplificatore delle possibilità umane e dunque un assenza di limite, vengono costituite ipotesi sui possibile effetti psicologici nel substrato sociale ed anche individuale.

This project identifies narrative intersections between first-generation Romantic literature and twentieth and twenty-first century graphic novels. Specifically, I comparatively read the nineteenth-century imaginative poesis with twentieth-century experimental narratology to reveal new understandings of graphic narratives as part of larger, historically distinctive discourses in our contemporary moment.