Schizophrenia in Freud and Lacan: No Return to pre-Kraepelinian Bewilderment

This article argues that while Freud accepted Kraepelin’s nosological divisions, he reversed the order of late nineteenth century conceptions of psychosis, objective-biological and subjective-biographical, without returning to early nineteenth century Romantic psychiatry or obviating the claims o f biological psychiatry on heredity. It demonstrates that neither the conceptions of Freud nor Lacan represent a return to the early Griesinger’s "unitary psychosis”or to pre-Kraepelinian classificatory confusion. "Schizophrenia” is the new name Eugen Bleuler gave to Emil Kraepelin’s "dementia praecox” in 1908.…