Lacanian psychoanalysis and the double split person/man theory

When reading this article titled "Psychotic Discourse: The Rhetoric of the Sovereign Citizen Movement" by Calumm Lister Matheson (2017), I have come across an interesting perspective on the double split between the natural man and the legal man. Even though it is a differentiation which is known and not disputed, the paralelism between the Lacanian psychotic structure and these theories of our relation with the legal system seems an interesting one in order to see what might be at play when putting forward certain theories. These theories are all different and depending on the man presenting them, they constitute different ideologies (set of ideas). However, that this is the case does not mean that these men are all psychotic, that they are in a sense insane, nor that these theories are all fantasies which do not contain anything of what we would understand as real (also a term which could be debated extensively). Men acting as lawyers or judges can be equally or more psychotic, especially since the matrix is built in "their game", they could be equally psychotic but just at the other (or officially accepted) end. 

The article I read makes reference to the "Sovereign Citizen Movement" which I have not come accross specifically but which contains much of the theory that I have been studying. The terms sovereign and citizen together are an oximoron since they portray two opposing concepts which cannot be married together. That is one of the reasons why I think the article is not valid for all the arguments that these theoreis account for, since it is just centered in a movement that has many and important internal incoherences. Nonetheless, the specific theoretical point that I am going to analyse in relation to Lacanian psychoanalysis is one which is shared across these theories, because it is a foundational concept: the double split between the man and the legal person. I will see how that identity split relates and can be explained in the Lacanian psychotic structure. 

"The Lacanian vision of psychosis is important for the light it sheds on the “normal” formation of subjects and the operation of language. To understand psychosis as a relationship to the signifier—a mode of reading—rather than an individual pathology is to recognize that we are all potential captives of the signifier in one way or another and likewise subject to its failures. As Lacan wrote, “Not only can man’s being not be understood without madness, but it would not be man’s being if it did not bear madness within itself as the limit of his freedom” (Écrits 479)."

Lacan's account of psychosis is just a way to explain how signifiers operate in order to explain human subjectivity. "For Lacan, psychosis is a relationship to the signifier characterized by the subject’s refusal to integrate (via foreclosure or Verwerfung) the “Name of the Father,” or ordering function of the signifier in metaphor. The signifier itself is the connective element of the Symbolic order. Once the signifier is foreclosed, psychotic discourses replace the ordering function of metaphor with a metonymic delusional scheme that, although full of meaning for its subjects, lacks efficient integration with the Symbolic as understood by those outside of that delusional scheme."

The subject's formation starts with the baby being ONE with the mother. Then the baby’s mirror reflection individualises and unifies the self, but it alienates it from the mother (the “lost object”). The relationship with the image is the foundation of the Imaginary Order, defined by meaning, identification, fantasy, and the “lost object”.

The result is a divided subject --> S/Ego

·    Speaking subject (S, Freud’s Id) Subject consciously addressing another

·    Ego (other in me) subjects reduce themselves to the image of this ego (returned by the lost object, mother’s acknowledgement that the image is the baby) but losing their continuity with the world. But this identity which forms the ego serves as an object for others.

·    Interlocutor (a’) lost object (for example, the teacher which in turn defines the ego as a student) MOTHER

·    Big Other (A) order of the Symbolic. The Other is structured by the “laws” of the signifier, the “grammar” of reference that pins together our socially mediated order. FATHER

The relationship between A and the split subject (S and Ego) defines the relationship between the subject’s reality and the world.                                               

“The reduction [to the image of the ego] is the basis for the lack—the state of incompletion that is the cause of desire. Although the ego is defined by loss, it also permits the coherence necessary to participate in language.”

The idea that man is something else (or more) than the ‘legal person’, that one which is on paper and is a mere reflection of oneself, is the individual trying to overcome or complete that lack by ceasing to identify with the image reflection (Ego) projected for others and which serves as an object (thus not a subject) for others. It is a symbolic attempt to complete the “lack”. The Big Other (A) is the Law and thus the mediator between the subject (S) and the Ego. Who am I for others? Who am I in relation to myself? Who am I in relation to the Law?  

The “tokens” we use in order to circulate in the Symbolic are our Egos. The double split theory of man/legal person is a way to understand this “token” and its relationship with the world, be it with the State, the legal system, the judicial system, and all the other aspects of one’s life. “The strawman identity is an intermediary for the Other, not fully self but not entirely foreign, a means of communicating with the Symbolic metonymically.” We all know in a way that we are not our passports, that the passport is a way to control, register ourselves into the country and that it has it advantages and disadvantages. The difference with these theories is the emphasis that is placed in this distinction between the “real flesh and blood” self and the legal person. Such is the case, that the word “person” itself, as it is identified with corporations, seems to indicate only the self in the fictitious realm, the token.

“The strawman is the self but not fully the self as it is issued by the state but partially belonging to the individual; a marker of “slavery” or reduction to a “thing” but also an office that the individual partly recognizes.” It is clearly an intermediary object, with which the individual is able to conduct and arrange his own affairs. However, the complete refusal to identify with the object that acts as the Ego (or surrogate token) for others, is in a way a refusal of the Symbolic order (or the Big Other) in which others operate too, leading to a full separation of the self and the “outside” world. A complete refusal of assimilation with the token could be a refusal to the Law altogether as it is accepted and perceived by others around us. “Sovereign citizens refuse to identify with the self as the Other presents it. It is as if the baby of the mirror phase recoils from its reflection as soon as the parent acknowledges it in an act of infant rebellion: what the parent insists I am is what I must never fully be.” In so far as there is a complete and utter denial of the ego as it is returned by the others, there is an act of rebellion which could indicate a psychotic break from “A”. Being free is thus equated to letting go of the Ego that is projected by the others unto the self and becoming someone different (and thus still attached to it in a differential relationship) than the “person”.

Nonetheless, there is a significant difference between not accepting any law (or father) and not accepting a corrupt and tyrannical law (or father). This difference would not be about being selective about which law suits the individual at each time, whether statutory, civil or natural; but about whether one accepts liability (responsibility) for oneself, one’s property and accepting that there are laws and limits above oneself. So, what would happen if the Father is an abuser and returns a delusive and submissive egoic image to the baby? Should the baby accept His law and accept that Ego as his, even when the Father’s law is the one which should be reconsidered?

Moreover, precisely because of the power of language as the Big Other’s intruder in the self, grammar can also be weaponised, and there are indeed many examples of political and corporate doublespeak, in order to confuse and deceive the ignorant. Not only that, but knowing the power of signifiers and grammar, we could all be using a matrix of language which is detrimental to the majority and which, at some moments in time, it is precisely the psychotic that in his quest to “break free” from those signifiers, he becomes the one who is better able to see through the tyrannical discourse and who is better equipped to reveal the deception at play.

Could the system itself be psychotic instead?