ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. It gives us the key to working successfully with psychotic patients who are considered by some clinicians to be unanalyzable precisely because they are incapable of developing transference in the traditional psychoanalytic sense. Alluding to Jacques Lacan's own transformative encounter with psychosis, Allouch recommends that the clinician occupy the place of secretary of the alienated, a perplexing yet clinically astute maneuver. The aim of this book is to change people perception of madness. Lacan says that the psychotic is the martyr of the unconscious, giving to martyr its meaning of witness. People cannot intervene in current debates about normalcy and pathology, causation, effective modalities of treatment, prognosis, and currently popular ideas of what constitutes cure, while offering a reassessment of the positive and creative aspects and potential of madness.
