The Navajo, Psychosis, Lacan, and Derrida

The effective violence of disseminating writing. An infraction marking the "symbolic." Would every possibility of disorder and disorganization in the symbolic, from the vantage of a certain outside force, would everything that forces the symbolic, derive from the specular (or the "imaginary"), that is, from a "real" determined as the "impossible"? From schizophrenia or psychosis? In this case, what are the conclusions to be drawn?

—Jacques Derrida, Positions

So psychoanalysis "recognizes itself" when it is confronted with those very psychoses which nevertheless (or rather, for that very reason) it has scarcely any means of reaching: as if the psychosis were displaying in a savage illumination, and offering in a mode not too distant but just too close, that towards which analysis must make its laborious way.

—Michel Foucault, The Order of Things¹

Many older cultures had no specific word for the kind of state the term psychosis attempts to describe, but it was a state they were familiar with and to which they bore a more complex relation than does contemporary Western society. Although psychosis was a condition that aroused much concern for the Navajo, or Diné, at least, their response to it was and is closer to the sentiments of Derrida and Foucault than to the outright fear that most of us would express. Psychoanalysis tends to regard psychosis, as it does neurosis and perversion, as essentially incurable, but the classical method of psychoanalytic treatment is not recommended for psychotics, and most psychoanalysts do not work with psychotic patients. Jacques Lacan, whose fascination with psychosis led to his interest in psychoanalysis, worked with psychotics throughout his career but never elaborated any procedure for treating them. He tended to regard psychosis as a descent into the darkest reaches of the imaginary, a state which, he believed, all must exit in order to become functioning subjects, no matter how rebellious or compliant. Even though psychosis in many ways is on or outside the perimeter of the Lacanian theoretical and practical structure, I will suggest that psychosis is the alien and familiar underside that both supports and dismantles psychoanalysis. Psychosis performs a similar dual function in Navajo culture, but the primary difference is that the Navajo, largely through story and ceremony, recognize that the path to psychic health and well-being winds through the forest of insanity, while psychoanalysis, as Foucault asserts and Derrida implies, has yet to acknowledge that. However, toward the end of his career, Lacan did come to realize, I believe largely unconsciously, that psychosis was a place from which health and even enlightenment could arise.

In the later parts of this essay, I will focus on the intersections between psychosis, Navajo ceremony and story, and some of the key concepts and figures of Lacan and then Derrida in order to demonstrate that psychosis is both cure and poison; it occupies a position in the discourses of the Navajo and of Lacan that is akin to Plato's pharmakon and Derrida's différance. The Navajo Evilway ceremony and the Coyote Transformation story, in particular, can teach us how to deal with structural and historical trauma and loss, and Lacan and Derrida can help us appreciate how sophisticated and compelling that lesson is. First, though, I will describe the Navajo and the psychoanalytic methods for dealing with mental illness.

Many Navajo ceremonies are performed to restore health to someone who is mentally ill. They are intricate procedures, organized around chants or "sings" (hataal) conducted by a medicine man or "singer" (hataalii). The ceremonial system, passed on orally from singer to apprentice, is endorsed by and elucidated in a large network of stories which are also transmitted through the generations. Most systems contain two major parts, the general origin story, which includes the emergence from the underworlds, and the origin story of each separate ceremonial. Each general origin story follows the plotline of a journey upward through several layers or worlds (anywhere from two to fourteen stacked on top of each other) below the Earth's surface, upon which order and balance is created. One of these healing ceremonials is "Red Antway," so named because red ants are...