“Psychosis vs. Neurosis” | @ MGLC Švicarija, Ljubljana
Lecture by Maks Valenčič
Transcription
Claire Elise:
If we are ready to begin again, I would like to proudly introduce Maks Valenčič from Šum Journal, a “huge rising star” in psychoanalytical thought, and is someone that we are really proud to have working with us. I think today you're going to get, if you don't know already, a brief overview and an introduction to the research that they are working on, which has a lot to do with Lacanian and post-Lacanian discourse on psychosis and neurosis, which I think is going to play in later and make a really nice connection with the whole concept of subjectivity and computation. So if I can invite to the floor, Maks, please. Thank you so much.
Maks Valenčič:
The title of my talk is Psychosis vs. Neurosis, and Why This Is Philosophically Important — let's see where this goes. It is my contention that accelerationist philosophy, especially Nick Land's version, successfully solved the problem of psychosis in the domain of psychoanalysis. The psychotic position is perpetually overcoded because no one is allowed to speak from it, write from it in an immanent way, or even have access to it. There is always, in psychoanalytic approaches, at least an implicit warning against psychosis, even if neurosis and psychosis are two structurally equivalent positions; so there is no inherent reason for that. To think psychosis, we need an immanent conceptualization of it, and that's where Nick Land's philosophy comes into play, because it shows us the way, at least in a certain sense. And this is important because this directly contrasts Žižek's philosophy, which is the ultimate expression of, and most speculative grasp of, neurosis; what the Hegelian-Lacanian reading is all about — this is from Alireza Taheri. So we could say, tongue-in-cheek, that this is the very reason why Nick Land doesn't want to do a podcast with Žižek, because why would a psychotic want to listen to neurotic ramblings that know nothing about the other position, apart from doing the best to exclude it in not the most pleasant way possible?
Just to ground the concept of psychosis, usually when we think about psychosis, we think of a certain loss of reality, or experiencing, manifesting psychosis, becoming psychotic, AI psychosis, and so on — all cases speak of the same thing. And yet, the opposite is also true. The problem with psychosis is that psychotics are in love with reality, perhaps even too much. So this is also why they have so many difficulties with it; with stabilization, with coming to terms with limits, loss and, of course, constraints of the social bond. And that's why it's my belief, or rather what I was trying to explore here, that the key point in psychosis is not a loss of reality, but rather reality being too invasive or unstable, but involves an attempt to establish a relationship with the Other on their own unique and singular terms. That's where, let's say, the concept of "sinthome" comes. So this is the key to what I was thinking in regards to psychosis when preparing this talk — and the pay-offs between neurosis and psychosis also stem from that, from this distinction. Like, how is stability possible? And the trade-offs on both parts give certain advantages and other disadvantages, of course.
And why is this significant? Because in neurosis the relationship with the Other is established through a third term: the Name-of-the-Father or the paternal metaphor, which delimits and constrains relationship for the subject. The subject has to come to terms with this fact, with the reality of symbolic mediation, castration, and the loss that comes with it, and that will determine the confines of their world. And psychosis is, of course, the opposite of that — foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father as the constitutive "gesture" of psychotic subjectivity.
So the key question concerning neurosis and psychosis is then how much you have to give (lose), in order to have a stabilized and functioning relationship with the Other — what's outside of you, your environment. If you simply start speaking in your own language, then there might be problems. You will be excluded. There won't be a possibility of communication; pathologization will happen. And that's why, to introduce another distinction, the problem is not castration as stabilization, but loss as the sacrifice of intensity. That's what psychotics rebel against, I think. What matters is how much of one's direct relationship to the Other has to be given up in order to become legible within the social bond. How much reality, how much of this intensity of the Other does one have to give up or renounce? How intensely can one experience this relationship, participate in it, feel what is happening around oneself, what is taking place outside the confines and the fiction of the social bond? I'll try to introduce a lot of examples later on, so just bear with me on this part.
And, again, the key distinction is that the more you lose, the more your existence is mediated; the one goes with the other. The more you interact with reality through this mediation, which precludes a more direct relationship, access and intensity, the further and further you are removed from the Real, let's say, from what is actually going on. The more you succumb to fiction, to symbolic mediation, the more you hallucinate without even knowing it, because you have basically been paid for this loss with stabilization — that's the neurotic trade-off. And that's why, if we take older generations, for example, sometimes this "NPC" label becomes attached with them, because the problem with their existence is simply that they are following social scripts, so there's no real subjectivity in that because they are so far removed from the real.
Perhaps psychoanalytic theory still hasn't come to terms with the fact that one is, in truth, penalized for not simply accepting loss on the basis of faith. Neurotic subjectivity is constituted through this loss, and for the neurotic this loss not only becomes necessary, but is also given meaning through the installation of a limit. And again, neurotics believe that this loss is necessary. Their firm belief is that symbolic mediation necessarily entails a certain loss of intensity, the institution of lack, because this is how they went online. That is the trade-off that they have succumbed to, the neurotic leap of faith that then presents itself as universal — this is again from Alireza Taheri. And after this leap of faith takes place, they simply cannot know that something else is on the table, because the relationship is reconfigured fundamentally, and so on. The psyche has been reconfigured accordingly: mediation by the paternal metaphor has been installed, and they simply cannot access anything else. Let's say that they are victims of this fiction, and because of that, everyone else must also lose something, because they had to. That's the axiom and their ontology: loss universalized because it happened to them, let's say, if you are a little bit too polemic or provocative. This is why, to situate Žižek's philosophy, we could say that: neurotic reality is socially mediated loss taken as ontology.
And then we have Nick Land. So again, to reiterate the same point, how much symbolic mediation is necessary is the key question, because symbolic mediation through the third term is the fiction of the social bond that Lacan talks about. Neurotics are willing to subjectivize this fiction: the external third principle that defines and overdetermines one's relationship with the Other. It determines the interface one has to go through in order to access the other side and, of course, we know Deleuze & Guattari's critique of, let's say, preference for lack in psychoanalytic theory. But for us, the more important thing here is that, contrary to general beliefs or how usually people approach these problems, in both neurosis and psychosis, there can be stabilization. The difference is simply that in psychosis, stabilization doesn't occur through the social bond, but in a singular way proper to the psychotic subject, the sinthome, and how this goes about in psychosis, this relationship is established in the dark. There is no limiting principle that has to be followed, no necessary limitation or mediation of this relationship because everything is still available. Nothing has been yet deemed illegitimate or inappropriate. There is no need for external legitimization, no necessary compromise that has to be accepted in order for this relationship to work.
And this trade-off between how one establishes identity, in its own singular terms, or through the social bond, again, differentiates between neurosis and psychosis, because the thing is that we can gain insight into one's identity by basically understanding this trade-off: how much loss has occurred, whether the limit has been installed, how the subject can enjoy, and so on. This can become transparent if we have this understanding of the dilemma or how a subject goes online, because these are all questions of libidinal investment. How much one can invest in what one likes, what one desires, in one's own image, expectations, beliefs in what seems possible, what kind of enjoyment is available, what kind of intensity one can perceive and experience, how much one can expect from reality. These are again the trade-offs that one faces when thinking through these questions of loss, and passivization is simply this trade-off: how much did you need to lose for stability to take place, for you to become a subject? The symbolic father is simply this, and psychosis is then an attempt at stabilization without a loss. That's perhaps one of the most important things that psychotic subjects try to achieve, and there are many cases of spectacularly failing at doing so. Now I will try to be increasingly more concrete — so hopefully now we can have some fun.
But that's why this trade-off is also a clear discriminator, or the clear way to determine — or it gives us one path or one sense of determining — what is radical and what's not, because of course, within this configuration, what is radical is simply what hasn't been passivized, what has not experienced this loss, but where something meaningful has nonetheless occurred, where stabilization is possible and this new relationship can take place. And so then, again, radically, it is then a chart for determining how much you have lost. That's, let's say, the proposition, and different symptoms, political stances, type of enjoyment, intellectual traditions, aesthetic sensibilities, fashion choices are all part of this game. I know that I'm sounding like I'm propagating some pseudoscience from the 19th century, but it really gives one a sense that this is indeed the case. If you think about — I don't know — how, for example, fashion choices in middle-age men, what colors are available? Brown and blue, of course, the loss is the reason why.
So how much you have lost is, after all, a question of intensity. No loss: the relationship has not been passivized, there is no need for the internalization of the Other, dialectical mediation, internal management of lack and so on. And this is why accelerationist philosophy is quite important, because it's a framework for understanding these problems, and also an explicit attempt at thinking through this impossibility of establishing a relationship with the Other that doesn't necessitate a loss, that does not simply come to terms with it. That's basically psychosis in action. Whereas in neurosis, there is not only the expectation of a loss, but also a meaning that is gained through it. That's why, if we take Alireza Taheri, there is meaning that comes with a loss in neurosis. And this is why neurosis will always be structurally more conservative than psychosis, regardless of Žižek's hocus pocus or abracadabra spells at us.
Now finally we can relax and start actually gaining proper traction with what I'm saying, and unfortunately I didn't find the right image, but basically — in the boxing match between Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua, Jake Paul was trying to put a spell on Anthony Joshua by doing this Charles Manson-type faces, but this doesn't really capture it. The key point is simply that in psychoanalysis, we have a situation where psychosis is one of the potential subjective positions in relation to the Other, desire, law and jouissance, but at the same time, it's always measured against neurosis. Not only that: it's almost always presented in negative terms as an impossible position, or fool's gold, and so on. This is what Taheri tells us: Oh, a child has psychotic subjectivity... well, it's "fool's gold," an impossible position. And this is the reason why a psychotic position is excluded from existence, because as it will become clear later on, the constitution of neurotic subjectivity requires its rejection. That's another important point. And this is a rejection of having it all, of retaining direct access to the Other, which is precisely what is lost in neurosis.
So the distinction comes from the problem of access, enjoyment, participation and social bond, as we have already said, because the psychotic position is this one: having it all through the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, at the cost of not having anything. That's why it's fool's gold and an impossible position. And this leads to not being able, or refusing to come to terms with castration, not being able to participate in the Symbolic Other in the same way, not being signified or represented by the social bond. And this is how Lacan says it: "it's existence at the level of ex-sistence." Neurosis is, of course, the opposite. Through this loss, the subject gains access to the Other. It's the dialectic of losing something and gaining something in return, becoming a symbolic subject. So this is the key difference.
And that's why I try to, playfully, put it in this way, that there are two types of people in the world, those who have lost something and those who haven't. And of course, the latter ones are psychotics. And that's why the neurotic objection to psychotics is, of course, "you cannot have it all." That is a neurotic assertion against psychotics. Whereas Nick Land likes to call artists "those savage beasts that can't get enough of too-much." So this is like the epitome of psychotic response. Neurosis responds to this excess with balance, measurement, authority, mediation, participation through a social bond. A certain loss is necessary. And this is good for neurotics, because when one comes to terms with castration, with losing something, they are also able to castrate the Other in return: "If I can't have it all, no one can." That's the expression. Not only that, having it all becomes an impossibility, a phantasmatic exception, the primal father, and therefore an inherently suspicious position whenever anyone seems to occupy it.
And as I already hinted there, this is why neurotics are so good at checking authority. On some level, that is all they do. They're so fundamentally suspicious of anyone who seems to play the game too much by their own rules, anyone for whom authority does not seem to apply in the same way. The easiest way to find this limitation in neurosis is how people who gain money cannot really spend it, because the limitation is so apparent, and then they have to spend €100,000 for a car because that's the most they can buy themselves with money, because their relationship with the Other has no intensity. So this is a correlate of this fact.
Because psychosis is a structural impossibility, this leads to neurotics being especially against psychotics. They see in them pure evil, and not only that, but they rebel against them with full force. And here I purposely put it in the way that... Psychotics are perhaps the best scapegoat in town for neurotics. And the "punch a nazi" slogan is one formulation of how this relationship is understood. For them, psychotics are an abomination that shouldn't exist, because they go against everything that has been established — Satanism is another word for this position, which is kind of hilarious. Charles Manson intentionally embodied this role to perfection; he played neurotics like a fiddle, successfully triggering precisely this response from American society. And this is why he established himself as a mirror to the American people, in the same way that psychosis functions as the excluded part or symptom in neurosis: what neurotics have lost or rejected in themselves and so on. And this is how we can understand his famous quote: "the only person you should be scared of is yourself." This myth of the primal father — it's the same idea of this impossibility, or fantasy of exception that doesn't really exist in the real world. And then if, by chance, this exception is encountered in the real world, it causes a panic reaction. And that's why I again put it like tongue-in-cheek: that's why if you are a man, you cannot be good at everything, smart and beautiful at the same time.
Now finally, the part that I really want to tell, because it's like pop culture and so funny. This is the reason why psychotics are the most opulent figures: they haven't lost anything. So when they succeed by chance or miracle, they cause a panic reaction, with Nick Land being a contemporary example of this. But, of course, they are also excluded from existence. And my brother shared with me a nice neurotic story: "I regret watching a Netflix documentary about Epstein. You cannot win against crazy people. There is no point in engaging with them as you will always lose." This kind of puts it nicely, I think. But we should stay focused and grounded to the Earth, because psychotics are, ultimately, the losers of history. That's the important thing — satanic rebellion basically constituted the psychotic position, "rebellion as a response to creation, at the inception of the universe." What could be more psychotic than that? A rebellion against definition, one's place in the world, hierarchy and the divine order. Because Satanic rebellion has failed, it means that from that point onwards, it has become a warning sign for all future attempts at thinking that something like that could work, or for any other spectacular attempt at rebellion, like Gnosticism, for example, which is basically the same thing. So now anyone who tries to do the same thing, to occupy the same position, is immediately deemed irrevocably lost, misguided, or evil. And if we want it or not, we are still part of this same story.
And here are finally the warning signs, so that you won't say that I'm just uncritically glorifying all of this, because the consequence of this ontological rejection or banishment from existence into hell is that the psychotic position becomes synonymous with exclusion, with everything that has been excluded, cannot exist, cannot be spoken, cannot be thought of, and so on. And this leads people who feel this fundamental exclusion to libidinally invest in such figures, expressions, and affective positions. And the problem with this stance is that it can lead to self-victimization, or a victim mentality in general, and perhaps even more problematically, into an excuse to abandon reality: to think that everything is a conspiracy, that one is simply entitled to things because of how evil people are to them, or to a general neglect of truth and everything that comes with it. So there are a lot of warning signs here for sure, but psychotic savoir — this is a concept from American psychoanalyst Bret Fimiani — is not a victimhood mentality, but a more sincere attempt to understand and map this problem. And even if we think of Nietzsche, like in the "hardest of hardships," he never succumbed to this kind of victimhood mentality, but very strongly rebelled against it.
Again, to continue with the perils that come with the psychotic position: people who feel fundamentally excluded from the social bond can fall into this trap that I was just describing. So negative obsession with serial killers, Nazis, cult leaders or other similar figures like Andrew Tate, who are "fighting against the Matrix" — this is Psychosis 101. And not that this is inherently pathological, or by necessity uninteresting or unimportant... It has to be properly contextualized so that the good doesn't come with the bad, and the profound doesn't come with the unnecessary or excessive, because as we have already established, this position, on the one hand, promises full mastery and unconstrained grasp of history, occult or esoteric knowledge that is hidden and fundamentally inaccessible to others. Occult and esoteric history is basically psychosis in action, with some really important results, like the CCRU. But it is precisely for this reason that it has to be properly grasped. This is the mastery of initiation in all occult traditions, in order to then be actually appreciated and useful. And it's safe to say that a lot of psychoanalysts don't really tap into this territory, even if, let's say, Freud was influenced by Jewish Kabbalah and we know a lot about Jung's interest too, but Jung is, of course, excluded.
And let me now give you some additional figures who speak of the "psychotic arts," of the same logic that I've been discussing. Sauron in The Lord of the Rings is a very nice example, because he is the "Master of Deceit" — manipulation, illusion, giving you what you want, what you most desire. Because this is the neurotic weakness: what they have renounced, what they do not have, what they have to repress. So, of course, Galadriel is weak for Sauron; and the same is true for Grimes. Her beautiful middle finger tattoo with Sauron's Eye — but I checked Grimes' feed, and there was no confirmation that this is actually the case. Another example is the Sith in Star Wars. Unfortunately, I cannot do the Emperor Palpatine's voice, but: "The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural."
And now, an obscene example that still captures this at a structural level really nicely: "Esoteric Hitlerism" is another example of this, where Hitler is imagined as a divine or superhuman figure, the "Last Avatar," a reincarnation of the divine, a misunderstood and rejected Christ — because here, the rejection functions as the proof. This is the reason why they are perceived as divine, because they've been rejected. The more he is rejected, the more the rejection confirms the fantasy of election. Savitri Devi and Miguel Serrano basically turn Hitler into a man against time, a divine figure trying to stop the inevitable spiritual and social decay of the Kali Yuga. The important point is not truth, but structure: forbidden knowledge, unnatural abilities, impossible mastery, access to the hidden dimension of history. The more the social bond rejects the figure, the more this rejection becomes proof that something is really there. But again, from the neurotic standpoint, this is understood simply as deceit. That's why Satan is portrayed as the ruler of this world, the Prince of worldly things. He is considered the mastermind behind deceit, discord, and primarily, the temptation to treat the material, sensual or power-driven goals as ultimate ends. And this is why, from the neurotic standpoint, what psychotics do is simply drug them by giving them what no one can have.
To slightly shift registers... That's why a lot of the time psychotics are beloved by children, because they know the secret that preoccupies a child's mind, namely the nature of loss, what is expected of the child to grow up, to become like their father, and what is in store for them, whether they like it or not. And psychotics are there to make this secret more bearable, to show that it can be resolved on singular terms, that a more singular transition into adulthood is possible, where something of the child can be retained, where what was once true doesn't have to be renounced, and where full erasure of memories doesn't need to take place, because otherwise... yeah, it happens.
Let me just ramble a bit on this pop culture examples... Because psychotics haven't renounced their relationship with the Other, where everything is possible, they can give everything in return. Think of Ye or P. Diddy — I don't know why I have all of these problematic examples, but that's why a lot of these figures are so successful in the industry, because they have no limitations, no limits for enjoyment, and therefore know much more intimately and intensely what people "truly want," "what they truly crave for," and their relationship with the Other is more based on the imaginary register than the symbolic. In simple terms, they show people what they want to see, what they could see if they were given this possibility: access to it. It's like overidentification, or designing T-shirts for high-school teens. It's about giving them what they want: "hyperstition this" on the back, and Grimes' middle finger on the front; or "I mog" text on the top and below it a print of Charles Manson's eyes from his most famous portrait. And this leads to empowerment, because now the Other gives symbols to the "kids" through which they can express themselves in ways they otherwise couldn't. The symbols become the core of their identity, but they are still dependent on some crazy schizo to help them.
And again, this is just reiterating the same point over and over again, but the definition of a "genius" also falls in line with what we're discussing. Genius is just someone who is excellent at being oneself. How close you score on the genius chart is based on how much you have lost. And Nietzsche's injunction to "become who you are" is basically another example of this same logic. In neurosis, things are quite different and much more vetted, of course, because one is not simply entitled to such a thing — of being yourself. This is the core: when it comes to neurosis, everything has to be learned. Nothing is simply given. Nothing can simply be true before someone confirms it. Everything is vetted for the same reason. Reality has to be constrained at every level, and who is exceptional or not has to be determined as early as possible in order to keep the hierarchy as stable as possible.
If you take sports, for example — I don't know how familiar you are with the NBA, but Victor Wembanyama is like "a freak": extremely long, extremely tall, extremely athletic. One has to be an alien like Wemby to qualify for this position, to be entitled to having one's own beliefs; everyone else has to fall in line and not think of themselves through these eyes. And even if they are deluded enough to think that they can still achieve something, even if there is no expectation of this from their peers, it will be in their 20s that they will have to renounce these beliefs, because otherwise they will be bullied for it in their 30s. Again, this is real in neurosis, but not in psychosis. Thresholds, initiation, this kind of stuff — this is all neurotic theater. Another distinction: in neurosis, you cannot feel special if you are not successful, whereas in psychosis, you can. That is one more reason why neurotics hate psychotics, because psychotics are completely oblivious to their fictions. They devalue their hierarchy too much, they show that this is not all — that hierarchy is artificial, it doesn't track the real world, and not only that, but that it is based on a limitation and is therefore not the best thing in town. And that's where this reversal between the lowest and the highest level of reality comes from, as Miroslav Griško keenly observes in a different context.
So what is the secret? Castration has to happen, but it does not have to go through the social bond. It's like the Sith's relationship with the Force: if you can endure it, you are entitled to the dark arts. If you can push the envelope, if you are successfully hyperstitioning reality, then this is who you are. You are a master of the psychotic arts. You are in on the secret, and the secrecy is what no money can buy.
And just to conclude, that's why in psychoanalytic theory there are always these clinical examples, but this is what Deleuze and Guattari already warned us about in Anti-Oedipus — that the clinical examples are precisely the examples through which this secret is lost. And the final point is simply that, basically, for Nick Land — Nick Land is an example of castration that works, and also of someone who suffered no loss. And basically, his general thesis all along was that, or is still that, neurosis is anthropocentrism in disguise. And this is what Nick Land has been saying all along. Thank you.
©2026, Berlin/Nicosia
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