ABSTRACT
Lacan suggests that the term 'repression' be kept for neurosis and that the failure of primal repression which is co-responsible for psychosis be called 'foreclosure'. The current state of knowledge in the field of psychosis is scanty, and therapeutic methods are consequently vague and very diverse. The notion of foreclosure is essential to the understanding of psychosis in the framework of Lacanian thought. This possibility of a return of the repressed results from the fact that the neurotic has acquired the use of linguistic signs. It results from the fact that the element to be repressed was at some point recognized as existing, that its signifier was symbolized, situated and registered in a network of knowledge and inserted into the web of a personal discourse. The wolf man's case is not a definite case of psychosis, the analysis he underwent with Freud having delivered him, rather, from a neurosis taking various forms: hysterical, phobic, obsessional and hypochondriac.
