Goethean Botany and Zoology in the Young Lacan
Morphogenesis in “Of paranoiac psychoses in their relationships with personality”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53382/issn.2452-445X.29Abstract
With his 1932 psychiatry thesis Jacques Lacan intended to demonstrate that paranoiac psychosis is equivalent to the development of the personality, becoming intelligible to delirium because of its relation to the affective history of the subject. To argue his point, he used the Goethian morphogenesis model, which is scattered in veiled forms throughout the text, operating as a paradigmatic image and a constant metaphorical reference that explains the phenomena of the specific case that Lacan addresses: a patient he calls Aimée. This paper shows how the Goethean route through zoology-botany and back to zoology justifies the Lacanian use of the trope of the plant and its various metamorphoses.
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