https://www.courtilpro.be/courtilenlignes/index.php/revue/article/numero-10/courtil-papers/cecilia-or-no-name-for-the-worst

For me, a particular interesting aspect of the case is the following:

“… However, these "bad images" could surface at any moment - such as when she antagonized with insults a girl who, since her arrival, she had held in friendship (they had shared a room at the psychiatric hospital). Moreover, according to her, certain objects "evoke the bad images." First of these are what she calls "borders": the edge of the table, of her plate, of the window, or a book ("I'm afraid of corners."). Then the black points of the tiles in her family home, the clock, and more precisely, the "black numbers," the knobs on the door of a piece of furniture belonging to her parents (which remind her of filthy things). It should be noted that she recalls having been afraid, when very little, of the end of her grandfather's cane, the spokes of her father's bicycle, and the white of toilets …“

Based on my own experiences (as a schizophrenic), I propose that borders are particularly difficult and anxiety-provoking since they unify two opposite momentums. A border shows that something ends right here, but at the same time, something other evolves from this point and can‘t be traced to its end, eluding to infinity. This ambivalent nature of borders threatens her body to dissolve; no ending can be experienced as a soothening halt, it‘s rather hell‘s precipice.

And why does the clock, especially the black numbers cause fear? First of all, the clock is a symbol for time, whereby its perception is an illusion. Since for her, the symbolic is the real and her imaginary fails, the clock becomes a real, dreadful thing she can‘t signify. The black numbers, potentially resembling fingers (that connects to the real phallus) stick out, standing on its own, and intrude her body.

Why the knobs on the door of a furniture belonging to her parents? Maybe this object is tied to a traumatic experience (such as the one with the boy). But foremost, it‘s the (intrusive) sensory quality — filthy — which she associates with the knob. Maybe the knobs had a „filthy“ tissue on them. Yet, I think there is more to it: for a human eye and brain, knobs are one of the „most spheric“ objects; at the same time, when inside is outside (as it’s true with the schizophrenic body) and three-dimensional objects become flat, they can stick out from the background and become intrusive.

Another interesting aspect (the paper partly points out) is the following:

„… At first, this dialogue installed itself along the lines of hypochondria: "I'm afraid I'm sick again... Oh, my heart!" (She rubbed the flat of her hand the length of her body.)

"Again," I said, "You've been sick already?"

"Sick in my head, when I was hospitalized. I don't want to go to the hospital. At the hospital, I'm afraid of falling into a coma. I'm afraid of dying."

Later, she would affirm, "I'm sick. My brain is sick. The water bypasses my stomach, maybe?"

"No. Is that what you believe?"

"My body is full of yeau.² I have cancer. I'm going to die. I have blood cancer."

Or again, "I'm going to get thin. My mother won't recognize me. I'm thin. I'm sick. When you have cancer, you're thin. They're going to feed me with a tube." …“

Clearly, she is afraid of having no name in her mother‘s eyes: when she gets thin, she no longer fulfills her role as an object of her mother‘s fantasy which equals annihilation. She associates this fear not with the mother, but with the doctors who are going to put a tube in her and feed her; this procedures equates an intrusion by the real phallus. The water (eau in French) bypassing the stomach is a direct expression of the fragmented body and the organ speech she tries to signify with the neologism „yeau“. („Yeau“ might be derived from „eau“ and yeux“ for eyes that refer to the Other’s gaze). The stomach is no longer in place, instead, there is a hole through which the water finds its unregulated way into the blood as well as the heart and the brain and overwhelm her body.

What‘s your take on this?

My supervisor has me reading stuff by the post-Freudians/psychodynamic therapists and I have to say it's very heavy on phenomenology. Their goal is to describe their concepts with as much detail and variety as possible. It reminds me a lot of academia.

Lacan, and Freud, on the other hand, focus much more on the structures and principles underlying these diverse phenomena. Lacan especially almost never gives case studies but these papers are filled with them.

They both have their place I suppose but I find Lacan's writings much much more inspired.