Schizofrenie vanuit psychoanalytisch perspectief

Summary

According to Freud, hypochondria is a basic element in schizophrenia. In a general sense hypochondria is the reverse of withdrawal of the libido from objects into the self and causes an upsurge of the drives within the self which puts the limits of the self under pressure. This upsurge causes the anxiety that always accompanies experience of hypochondria. However, hypochondria does not become a psychotic phenomenon until its schizofrenic dimension can be related to the vicissitudes of the representations and the affects that are both the psychic representatives of the enhanced drives. On the level of the representations, the schizophrenic aspect comes to the foreground in linguistic expression in which metaphorical meaning is taken literally. Expressions referring to his or her own body are understood and experienced by a schizophrenic person as innervations of his own body. Language loses its symbolic force. On the level of the affects it is argued that the drives, normally a source of pleasure, are experienced as a destructive power. The experience that the drives convey to the subject is that his or her body is bad, giving rise to a tendency to self-mutilation. The primary pleasure-ego aims at a destruction of the drives in order to protect itself against their aggressive power. From this point of view, the difference between schizophrenia and paranoia may be appreciated. The paranoid succeeds in keeping outside what is bad. The schizophrenic, on the other hand, fails to project the bad outside himself and is continually perforated by it from within. One further aspect of schizophrenic language is explored: the withering away of the signified, resulting in a world of empty signifiers. The link with unconscious thing-presentations is severed.