45

To consider schizo­phrenia from a psychoanalytic perspective is to understand it not from the categorization of an individual but from “schizo­phrenic speech,” that is from a statement which appertains to the splitting of thought. In thought, splitting —the schism—is opposed to systematization; similarly, schizophrenia is opposed to paranoia. Dealing with “schizo­phrenic speech” means taking into consideration what is said, in that it does not fall into unifying paranoiac systematization. It involves hearing schizo­phrenic speech as speech in expectation of an answer which could make a chain and through which a metaphor becomes possible in transference. In Lacanian topology, this structure—which is primarily local—corresponds to the Borromean chain in which the imaginary, the symbolic and the real remain disconnected, whereas paranoiac systematization corresponds to the knot of the trinity where the imaginary, the symbolic and the real are mixed up together.