Are there any psychosomatic disorders of the brain?

Psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian psychoanalysis, allows us to consider the psychic apparatus in relation to the symbolic category. Language and particularly the signifiers constituting it, differ from signs in that each signifier refers to another and not to any one object. In specific conditions this constitutive dimension of language can disappear and the signifier is thus reduced to sign. With psychotics the symbolic is deficient as this referential operation, particular to the category of signifier, is faulty because the child’s desire for (and for) the mother went unmediated by the function of the father as third party in the mother-child relationship. In schizophrenia (as well as other delirius forms of psychosis) under certain conditions the signifying function breaks down thus turning the schizophrenic’s world into one in which a number of events become enigmatic and signal him. The schizophrenic tries tο deal with these signs that besiege him either by an interpretative attitude, (a state that corresponds to Jaspers’ notion of delusional mood), or by apathy. These two types of responses correspond with the stereotypical (and mood) processes by which the schizophrenic attempts to avoid the distress provoked by the enigmatic desire of the Other, while simultaneously corresponding with psychosomatic processes of the brain organ. Robert Post’s neurobiological notion of kindling, David Hemsley’s mismatching of stimuli and Jaak Pansepp’s seeking system all contribute to enhancing our comprehension of the psychosomatic process operating in the schizophrenic.