If a group shows psychotic signs and is feminized along with speech disturbances, the manager must be removed and the gender balance must be restored.
Freud noted that violent hallucinations are a struggle between repression and an attempt at bringing the libido back to its objects, and therefore, psychic success lies with repression of perceptions. In this way, the psychotic person appears to lack real knowledge and cannot convey it. The workplace struggle with repression, and its attendant anxiety, leads to group bipolar disease symptoms.
Foreclosure and the Paternal Function
Central to psychosis is the concept of foreclosure. Foreclosure is the English word for the French word ‘forclusion’ which Lacan proposed as the radical rejection of a grounding element from the symbolic order. This grounding element, when foreclosed, causes the entire symbolic order of language to be affected. For example: privileged signifiers, such as “the will of the people”, etc., are not part of the psychotic’s lexicon. Psychotic managers might exhibit their own disturbances of the symbolic order by seeking to either prohibit or severely limit the speech of their employees. In this way, the psychotic manager cannot relate to the world.
In order to understand the concept of foreclosure, the concept of the symbolic order must be investigated. The symbolic order may be referred to as the public domain of verbal language. According to de Saussure, a sign consists of both a signifier and a signified. For example: as a signifier, consider the word ‘open’; and, as a signified concept, consider that the shop is open for business. Despite de Saussure’s avoidance of the usage, Langer used the term ‘symbol’ to refer to the linguistic sign. She stated that “symbols are not proxy for their objects but are vehicles for the conception of objects”.
Lacan proposed that the grounding element that is foreclosed in psychosis concerns the father, to which he referred as the ‘Name-of-the-Father’. Fink preferred the term ‘father function’ or ‘paternal function’. Thus, Caudill referred to this father function as a master signifier upon which the entire signifying network of culture and language relied. As an example, if a knowledge manager in a legal setting adopted public position, at a public debate, that authorised law reports were evil because they were compiled by men, then this stance would be indicative of a foreclosure of the paternal function. The manager’s continuing to work in the work group would indicate group bipolar disease.
Foreclosure and Anxiety Attacks
Mitchell stated that R. D. Laing said that the psychotic had not entered into the patriarchal culture because he/she was untouched by the law of the father, which would assign him/her a place in society. However, it might be better to say that the psychotic’s entrance into the symbolic order had, rather, been extinguished. However, Helene Deutsch noted the “as if” phenomenon, where a suppletion can provide a certain level of stability for the psychotic person, raising the issue of the nature of the psychotic’s relationship with parts of the language that have already been suppleted.
Suppletion describes a situation when an apt word cannot be found, and so one is imported from elsewhere. By way of example, if the subject manager were, from anxiety, to prohibit all speaking of legal technical words in a law office, and instead, suppleted the office communication with substituted plain English words, this would indicate a psychotic mechanism in the manager’s behaviour.
Fink stated that the paternal function was either operative by a certain age, or it never would be, and in this respect, Federn accorded with Fink, in identification of this passive state by saying: “When, with the progress of life, the established set of defence mechanisms, e.g., the hysterical or obsessional, is invalidated through accumulated conflicts and frustrations, then another deeper mental disorder develops. With its characteristic defences, compensations, compromises, and reconstructions, the psychosis is born”.
Fink noted that there was some question about the maximum age at which paternal function could be instated and that there would be an age for the child after which his/her psychical structure could not be further modified. Therefore, Fink proposed a structural approach to psychosis, which could be set out into its component elements:
- Hallucination;
- Language Disturbances;
- The Symbolic’s Failure to Overwrite the Imaginary;
- Inability to Create New Metaphors;
- Interrupted Sentences, and Neologisms;
- Predominance of Imaginary Relations;
- The Invasion of Jouissance;
- Lack of Control over the Drives;
- Feminization; and
- The Lack of a Question.
Treating Bipolar Work Groups
The key to the structure of psychosis is foreclosure of the Name-of-the Father, which is a master signifier affecting the psychotic person’s grounding in the social or symbolic order. Lacan’s idea of foreclosure was theoretically grounded in Freud’s theories of the castration complex in its Oedipal context. Lacan stated that the essential index to identification of psychotic behaviour is speech disturbances. If a convulsing managed group evinces signs of the structure of psychosis, and it appears as a feminised group with certain speech disturbances, the manager must be removed and the group gender balance restored.