ABSTRACT
Freud interprets his theory as a description of linearly occurring, intrasubjective processes that feature just a single central anxiety. Alienation and separation are two processes within the linguistically structured subject-Other relation that hark back to a more primordial dialectic of incorporation and expulsion. This chapter explains two striking clinical manifestations of these processes, anorexia and bulimia. It emphasizes that the lack found in the chain of signifiers-indicating the desire of the Other-has nothing to do with the original lack. Psychic identity is constructed in relation to the subject's own drive and to the Other through a double process-alienation and separation. The opening hypothesis of the metapsychology is that every psychopathological structure can be understood as a specific manifestation of the fundamental fantasy. The way the psychotic subject relates to desire and jouissance is structurally different from that of the pervert or the neurotic.
