The area “between neurosis and psychosis”—what you’ve referred to through various psychoanalytic frameworks such as BPO (Otto Kernberg), self disorders (Heinz Kohut), P-S and depressive positions (Melanie Klein), or perversion (Lacan)—is indeed a fascinating zone where the boundaries between subjectivity, structure, and pathology blur. Both Lacan and Deleuze and Guattari offer unique, though often contrasting, insights into this intermediary space. Let’s analyze their perspectives on this “in-between” area:
1. Lacan’s Perspective: The Spectrum Between Neurosis and Psychosis
For Lacan, the psyche is structured around three fundamental clinical structures—neurosis, psychosis, and perversion—each defined by the subject’s relationship with the Symbolic order, particularly with the Name-of-the-Father and the process of foreclosure or repression.
A. Perversion as a “Middle Ground”
• Definition of Perversion:
• Perversion for Lacan is neither a complete integration into the Symbolic order (as in neurosis) nor a complete exclusion or foreclosure (as in psychosis). Instead, it occupies a liminal space where the subject actively manipulates the Symbolic.
• The perverse subject challenges or “plays with” the law, often positioning themselves as its agent or enforcer, embodying a paradoxical relationship with authority.
• Relation to the Symbolic:
• While the neurotic subject represses desire and struggles with guilt, and the psychotic subject forecloses key signifiers, the perverse subject manages desire by disavowing castration and treating the law as a tool of enjoyment (jouissance).
• Key Example: Fetishism:
• Fetishism is a classic example of perversion for Lacan, where the fetish object serves to both disavow and affirm castration, allowing the subject to maintain a fragile balance between acceptance and denial of Symbolic lack.
B. Borderline States (A Lacanian View)
• While Lacan doesn’t specifically discuss borderline personality organization (BPO) as conceived by Kernberg, some Lacanian theorists see borderline states as arising from fragile Symbolic structures—cases where the Symbolic is not fully integrated, but not entirely foreclosed.
• These states involve oscillation between neurotic and psychotic mechanisms, marked by instability in the subject’s relationship to language, identity, and desire.
C. The “Pre-Oedipal” and P-S Position (A Klein Connection)
• Lacan’s early work (e.g., the mirror stage) aligns with aspects of Melanie Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position, particularly in the subject’s attempts to create coherence in the Imaginary realm before fully entering the Symbolic.
• Lacan, however, critiques Klein’s focus on internal object relations, emphasizing instead the role of language and the Symbolic in stabilizing the subject.
D. Disorders of the Self (Kohut’s Perspective Reinterpreted)
• From a Lacanian perspective, Kohut’s self disorders might be reframed as disturbances in the subject’s relationship to the Symbolic and the Imaginary. For Lacan, the “self” is not an autonomous entity but a construct of the Imaginary that depends on Symbolic anchoring.
• Fragile or fragmented self-experiences could be interpreted as failures of Symbolic mediation, leaving the subject overly reliant on Imaginary identifications.
2. Deleuze and Guattari: A Different Approach to the “In-Between”
Deleuze and Guattari, particularly in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, break away from the clinical categorizations of neurosis, psychosis, and perversion, offering a non-hierarchical and non-pathologizing framework for understanding subjectivity.
A. Beyond Clinical Categories
• Deleuze and Guattari reject the Oedipal framework, arguing that psychoanalysis imposes artificial structures on the psyche. Instead, they focus on desiring-machines and the flows of desire that constitute subjectivity.
• For them, “that area” between neurosis and psychosis could be understood as spaces of intensity, instability, and becoming, where desire breaks free from rigid structures but does not fully deterritorialize.
B. Perversion Reimagined
• In contrast to Lacan’s notion of perversion, Deleuze and Guattari view perversion not as a clinical structure but as a strategy of resistance or subversion:
• Perversion could be seen as a way of redirecting flows of desire outside normative structures, challenging social codes, and creating new assemblages.
• They do not treat it as pathology but as a creative potential, albeit one that can be co-opted or captured by power systems (e.g., capitalism).
C. Borderline States and BPO
• Deleuze and Guattari might conceptualize BPO or self disorders as zones of intensity and flux where subjectivity is in a constant process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization:
• The instability characteristic of these states reflects desiring-machines struggling to navigate between rigid stratifications (neurosis) and total deterritorialization (psychosis).
• These “in-between” states could be seen as lines of flight—moments where subjectivity moves toward new possibilities, even if they are painful or destabilizing.
D. P-S and Depressive Positions
• While Klein focuses on the internal object world, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize the external assemblages that shape subjectivity.
• The paranoid-schizoid position might be reinterpreted in their terms as a state of deterritorialization, where flows of desire are fragmented and unstable. The depressive position could correspond to moments of reterritorialization, where connections and coherence are re-established.
3. Key Differences Between Lacan and D&G on the “In-Between”
Aspect Lacan Deleuze and Guattari
Framework Structured clinical categories (neurosis, psychosis, perversion). Rejects clinical categories; focuses on flows and intensities.
Perversion Defined by a disavowal of castration and manipulation of the Symbolic. A subversive strategy for redirecting desire, not a pathology.
Borderline States Fragile or oscillating relationship with the Symbolic. Zones of intensity and flux, deterritorialization and reterritorialization.
P-S Position Imaginary attempts to stabilize identity before entering the Symbolic. Fragmented flows of desire; deterritorialization.
Pathology vs. Creativity Focuses on structural pathology within the Symbolic order. Emphasizes creative potential in “in-between” states.
4. Bridging the Gap
• Tensions and Complementarities:
• Lacan offers a structured, clinical understanding of the “in-between” as defined by the subject’s relationship to the Symbolic and castration. He interprets these states as deviations from normative psychic structures.
• Deleuze and Guattari view this space more positively, as a site of potential creativity, transformation, and resistance to repressive systems, even if it involves instability.
• Overlap:
• Both Lacan and Deleuze/Guattari acknowledge the fragility and instability of subjectivity in this “in-between” space, but they diverge in how they conceptualize its implications for the individual and society.
Conclusion
For Lacan, the area between neurosis and psychosis is marked by unstable relationships with the Symbolic, where perversion or borderline states reflect fragile or strategic engagements with the law and desire. For Deleuze and Guattari, this area is a site of intensity, creativity, and becoming, where subjectivity is in flux, breaking away from rigid systems but not fully dissolving into chaos. Both perspectives offer valuable insights, though their frameworks and emphases are profoundly different—Lacan being more clinical and structural, and Deleuze and Guattari more philosophical and political.
