https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ynWpIqOHiplSgXMfKr9VAOMBL2K9XDK0/view?usp=drivesdk
Above is a visual representation of Moncayo’s “knot of four”:
- The three core circles represent Lacan’s foundational registers:
- Real (R) – trauma, impossibility, rupture.
- Symbolic (S) – language, law, order.
- Imaginary (I) – image, ego, identification.
- The dashed fourth ring is the Sinthome—a stabilizing formation that compensates for failed knotting, especially in psychosis. It binds the others, not through symbolic integration, but through idiosyncratic creativity or symptomatology.
Now, let’s move to the second part of your request:
Comparison: Moncayo’s Knot vs. Deleuze & Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Assemblage
|
Concept |
Moncayo / Lacan |
Deleuze & Guattari |
|
Structure of Subjectivity |
Topological (Borromean knot) |
Assemblage (agencement) |
|
Breakdown |
Foreclosure of Name-of-the-Father causes psychosis |
Oedipal capture, lack of desiring-flow |
|
Symptom/Sinthome |
Stabilizing ring that holds together failed structure |
Productive coding of flows; not pathology but “machine-function” |
|
Therapy Goal |
Support the Sinthome (not interpret it) |
Liberate flows, deterritorialize, rewire assemblages |
|
View of the Unconscious |
Structured like a language (Symbolic) |
A factory, not a theater—productive, machinic |
|
Language |
Law, inscription, signifier |
Coding, decoding, deterritorialization |
|
Role of Art, Writing, Ritual |
May serve as Sinthome (Joyce’s writing, religious acts) |
Tools of becoming, lines of flight, anti-Oedipal machines |
|
Clinical Implication |
Hold together subjectivity where symbolic fails |
Enable schizo-processes, avoid normalization |
Striking Resonances
- Both frameworks move beyond the classical Freudian symptom as merely something to be interpreted or “cured.”
- Both see psychosis not as failure, but as a different economy of subjectivity.
- The Sinthome in Moncayo’s knot and the desiring-machines of Deleuze & Guattari both name stabilizing creative forms—even when “non-normative.”
- Both call for non-standard therapeutic ethics:
- For Lacanians: respect the sinthome, support its stability.
- For schizoanalysts: respect the flow, support its line of flight.
A Converging Clinical Wisdom
Don’t force integration. Don’t normalize the wound. Support the strange rhythm by which the subject survives.
If Moncayo tells us to knot with care,
Deleuze and Guattari tell us to deterritorialize with grace.
Both offer profound resources for what you’ve called “elemental sinthome therapy”—a quiet shelter on the road, where the wound becomes style, and subjectivity is not healed but held.
Would you like me to craft a joint diagram or poetic synthesis between these two models?
