Wolf Man diagnosed as Psychotic or Neurotic According to Freud & Lacan (Essay Sample)

Project Title:
Was Wolf Man diagnosed as a Psychotic or Neurotic or neither according to Freud and Lacan?
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Veronique Voruz and Professor Scott Wilson for their support in helping me to pick a specific case study to base my thesis on and specify my question to narrow down my project title and to make my dissertation piece more tangible to tackle.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Chapter 1- Differences between Psychosis and Neurosis
1.1 The differences between the behaviours of Psychotics and Neurotics
Chapter 2- Freud’s and Lacan’s analysis of Wolfman
1.1 Who was the wolf man? Brief overview of the Wolf Man case study
1.2 Freud’s Analysis of the Wolf Man
1.3 Jacques Lacan’s Analysis of the Wolf Man
1.4 The Differences in Lacanian and Freudian diagnostic practices of the Wolf Man’s symptoms
Chapter 3- discussions and debates on Structural Diagnoses
1.1 Structural Diagnoses of both Psychosis and Neurosis in reference to Freud and Lacan
1.2 Was Wolf Man diagnosed as more of a Psychotic or Neurotic? Judging by Freud and Lacan’s analysis and treatments of his symptoms
1.3 Analysis and critiques of Freud and Lacan’s treatments on Psychosis and Neurosis based on how Wolf Man’s symptoms were diagnosed
Chapter 4- Conclusions-
1.1 Summarise and debate the Freudian and Lacanian diagnostic practices on Neurosis and Psychosis in the psychoanalytical sphere and question what developments are there to be seen in the future of psychoanalysis
References
Abstract
This Thesis will be looking into the specific structural diagnoses from both Freud and Lacan’s analyses into both psychosis and neurosis and how the conditions impact on the patient in trying to discover what the patient’s personality structure is. Although this is always subject to revision based on new data in order to understand him or her as a complete and complex person in unravelling their symptoms and looking at both Freud and Lacan’s measures in treatment of these conditions and how they diagnose psychotics and neurotics. I will be investigating into how recent developments in both the psychiatrical and mental health sphere have helped improve the awareness of the conditions through Lacan and Freud’s journeys into the diagnostic treatments of psychosis and neurosis.
The main focus on this study will be not only be to investigate how the conditions have been diagnosed in reference to the Wolf Man case study but also explore what the recent developments are within the psychoanalytical world in referring to the how both Psychotic and Neurotic symptoms have successfully been diagnosed or not.
The main question the thesis will explore is whether Freud and Lacan’s diagnostic treatment of both psychotic and neurotic symptoms were successful, thorough, inconclusive or incomplete according to their readers in reference to the Wolfman. The case study is as an example in investigating how Freud and Lacan structurally analysed and diagnosed Wolfman’s symptoms from the conditions of neurosis and ordinary psychosis therefore evaluating the Wolf Man as either a psychotic or neurotic or neither in the psychoanalytical community.
Chapter 1- Psychiatrical Definitions and differences between psychotics and Neurotics.
1.1 The differences between the behaviours of Psychotics and Neurotics
Psychoses are major personality disorders formed by immense emotional and mental disruptions. These conditions make the individual incapable of controlled behaviour, adequate self-management and adjustment to society.
‘While neuroses refer to mild mental disorder, Psychoses mainly refer to insanity, mental instability or madness. The distinction between psychotics and neurotics in general are symptomatic, psychopathological and therapeutic.’ (2)
‘In psychoses, contact with reality is distorted or changed. The reality contact practically remains intact in a psychoneurotic, though its value may be quantitatively changed. In fact insight and reality have the same meaning for them as the rest of the community.’ (2)
The changes in the reality values of the psychotic, psycho- pathologically is partly expressed through projection, for example, the strong belief that one is rooted in the sphere of voyeurism, being watched constantly. Projection of this kind often based on a sense of guilt derived from the unconscious which is subjective.
Language, which is a means of communication, is the symbolising function for social adaptation. In psychoses language often undergoes immense distortion.
‘Psychoses may be considered dynamically as a disorder in which the ego looses much of its contact with reality and is more concerned with the forces of the id. The psychoneurotic on the contrary, suffers libidinal regression only to the phallic or late anal period as his conflict may be considered as a struggle between the forces of the id and the ego, in which the ego maintains its contact with expressed reality.’ (2)
‘The regression is only to the level of reality testing and so the neurotic retains insight and does not deny reality.
In psychoses, heredity, toxic and neurological factors are the determining agents. In the neurotic the speech and thought processes are coherent and logical.’ (2) In case of the psychotic’s speech and thought processes are incoherent, disorganised, unconventional and irrational. There is constant confusion. Delusions and hallucinations are also marked symptoms.
With the emergence of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis in the late 1800s, neurosis evolved to a chronic psychological disorder carrying symptoms of excessive anxiety or insecurity often compensated for by various defense mechanisms.
‘Neurotics are capable of self-management, partial or completely self-supporting, they are rarely suicidal. They do not need hospitalisation on the other hand; psychotics are incapable of self-management. They often attempt to commit suicide and need hospitalisation or equivalent home care.’ (2)
‘The personality of the neurotic undergoes little or no change from normal self. A neurotic has good insight. In case of a psychotic, on the other hand, there is radical change in personality; insight is partially or completely lost.’ (2)
The massive distinction between psychosis and neurosis is neurosis operates by way of repression, while psychosis operates by the way of foreclosure and regression.
While Lacanian clinicians recognise that psychosis is often connected to the most traumatic, extreme and horrifying aspects of human experiences they maintain that psychosis can also be genial and ordinary psychosis a form of psychosis does not appoint a new nosological category but refers to milder instances of psychosis that are not defined by positive and negative symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and immense disorganised behaviour.
Psychosis is the centre focal point for new theoretical assessments operated by clinical experience in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Unlike psychosis, in a neurosis, there is no fragmentation of reality, nor is there evidence of neurologic or other organic disease. The next chapters will look at Wolf Man.
Chapter 2- Freud’s and Lacan’s analysis of Wolfman
Who was the Wolf man?
Due to experiencing symptoms of depression since his older sister Anna committed suicide in 1906. Sergei Pankejeff (who was termed the name Wolf Man as a case study to protect his identity) visited psychiatrist Sigmund Freud In 1907. His father also took his own life as well by a taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Soon after in 1910 Pankejeff visited Freud in Vienna to begin treatment for his depression.
Freud's analysis was mainly centred on a dream that Pankejeff had as a young child:
‘I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in bed. (My bed stood with its foot towards the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and night-time.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up. My nurse hurried to my bed, to see what had happened to me. It took quite a long while before I was convinced that it had only been a dream; I had had such a clear and life-like picture of the window opening and the wolves sitting on the tree. At last I grew quieter, felt as though I had escaped from some danger, and went to sleep again’. (28)
1.2 Freud's Analysis of the Wolf Man
Freud claimed that Pankejeff’s dream arose as a resu...