ChatGPT Psychosis: A Lacanian Interpretation // 224

The Pill Pod looks at the chatbot psychosis phenomenon and compares it to Lacan's clinical structure of psychosis.


This is Episode 4 of our series on Lacan. Find the other episodes Ad-Free at
https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills


Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar III

Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis

"People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies" Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

"They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent them Spiraling" New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Right now, it's kind of incredible, Like all these people
who are against cancel culture, against hate speech. I mean,
Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of Trump, is literally invoking
the concept of hate speech. She's saying, we need to
think of a not just free speech, but also hate speech.
It's like, again, this fucking theory I've had forever about

(00:28):
like why wokeness and cancel culture was like I was
always worried it was going to create its mirror image,
and look here we are right now. Literally the mirror
image of it is happening. Now they're using even the
same terms. They've even been saying. This isn't cancel culture,
this is just consequences for your be That's exactly the
same shit that the fucking left was saying. And now

(00:49):
it's happening. And I'm and I've been consistent on this
since at least twenty sixteen, and I feel fairly vindicated
right now, although not happy. It's it's harp.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, David Portnoy said that this morning.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yes, he literally, yes, I saw that.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Actually, this is just consequences when you do it, it's
woke when we do it, it's consequences. But we did
our episode what like two public episodes ago on the
Woke Right, maybe three?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, a while ago we talked about the woke Right.
But now it's like, really with this incident.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
America, just like the the conservatives and the liberals, it's
just a bunch of I would like to speak to
the managers.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
And I have to say that, like there's two people.
There's like a couple of people who like I appreciate
for being like somewhat consistent. And one of them is
someone who I really have a big distaste for is
James Lindsay. I think James Lindsay's like stupid, but he
has been like somewhat consistent, and I have to give
him props. Of all the conservatives, he's like the only

(01:47):
one who's kind of saying like wait, like I think
he even like responded to Pam BONDI saying like hate
speech and he's like he's like, what are you talking about?
Like our side as not supposed to believe in hate speech?
Like what you what are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:59):
And I appreciate like where I appreciate it hit him
being one conservative voice who again I do not agree
with him. I don't like him, but at least he's
like holding to his principles. The rest are just fucking
principle as like scum who just like hold to principles
when it's convenient for them. And the real test of principles, you've.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Heard it here first, you'll hear it here only once.
James Lindsay is a good egg and he has a
great reading of Hegel.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
The only I feel like, I feel like principles like
the only time they matter is when they're not convenient
for you to hold on to. So I respect it.
When people are like, I'm going to stay consistent even
though it's not convenient for me to hold to my
principles right.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Now, well, that's when you hold people in politics to
unrealistic standards like having principles, then you're already setting yourself
up for disappointment because politics is uh, you know, it's
a cutthroat game.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I mean again, I should say I'm not surprised that
this is happening, Like I said, I was worried that
and thought it would happen, but still it's still notable.
And then like another person who I think at one
point was being like I would say, strangely critical of
the left, was like gren Glenn Greenwald went on like
a whole like he did a whole arc where he
was kind of calling out the left for censorship, and

(03:19):
I was kind of like, what are you doing? But
like to his credit, right now he is like very
much like alarmed about what's happening with with with Charlie
Kirk and people anyone even making comments like you know,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
So he's a dynamics of power.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
So we have to be careful here not to not
to glorify any violence because we might lose our very
cushy contract contract positions. Why would any why would why
would trans do this?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Though?

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Why would they kill a father and a husband who trans?
Why would why?

Speaker 1 (03:58):
I don't I don't understand, well, I mean I also,
I mean I ironically don't understand either. I think it's
just pretty stupid.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
But you know who is who is way more of
a father? I mean, this is a psychoanalysis episode. Why
would you kill? Why would you kill the father? You
know who is way more of a father than Charlie
Kirk and they still killed him?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Ben Lawden, who Ben Lawton had a lot more kids.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I was shocked. Ben Lawden has twenty six children, that's
insane and five wives. So he is an order of magnitude,
more of a father than Charlie Kirk. Deranged leftist podcast
compares Charlie Kirk to Bin Lauden. Yeah, I am doing it,
and I will face the consequences and you can get
me fired from my contract job. Victor did not do

(04:48):
this and Eric did not do this. But prove me wrong.
Prove me wrong. I'm setting up the tent. Prove me wrong.
Both both funded by right wing Americans to fight socialism. Check.
Both are pro gun. Both are religious fundamentalists. They're both

(05:12):
anti gay, uh, anti feminist, anti communist. Both were shot
without due process. The only thing that's difference between them.
The only difference between them is Israel well and also potential.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Well, maybe there's another difference that I think you're you're
possibly ignoring. Its like orchestrating, orchestrating like a terrorist attack
that killed thousands of people. I don't know that seems
like a relevant difference.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
All these are all these figures that function as the
paternal signifier and the media.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't know. We're on a we're on a toilet flush,
and I gotta say the vibes the vibes are off.
The toilet flush feels very bad. But also sitting back
and just thinking about it for a second, everything that's
happening feels like we're following a script, a predictable script,
like since not the event itself, since the event that

(06:10):
they're going to say this, and then yeah, we're going
to say that, and then we're going to say this,
and then these bad things will happen, and then these
people will be blamed and these people will be blamed
and everyone is kind of following their prepared script on it.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, I agree, And it's also predictable. I mean the
moment it happened, I knew what was going to happen,
Like I right away. I was like, oh, like I
see exactly where this is going. Obviously, like there was
a small shred of hope, you know that maybe it
was a groper who did it right, because like I
think if it would have been a groper.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
But what I mean, what's the difference.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Well, the difference is like, obviously, as someone who's more
sympathetic and committed to like some kind of a broad
left politics, I just think it would have made the
argument from like Trump or whatever that this is like
left wing ideaology's fault or like trans people's fault. Well,
just kind of would have short circuited the possibility of

(07:05):
making that argument if it was like very clearly like
an anti Israel groper or something like that, who was
like Matta Charlie Kirk like it just kind of it
would have been a different script, a better script in
my opinion, that would have come out of it.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Well, isn't it you know, like a lot like go back,
remember back to that CEO who was murdered, right, and
what gets blamed its radical politics? And yeah, the victor's
right here saying, you know, ideology isn't something you can
really point at and say that's the cause. Because when
you're dealing with this kind of political violence, it's the

(07:43):
politicians or the news media in power or select or
who have the choice to select that event and give
it a narrative. Rights that's the point of it. And
we see this story over and over again, you know,
violence radical being connected to radical politics and whatever. But
there's specific differences between the events, but it serves, it

(08:07):
serves a purpose.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
I will say I'm a lot more sympathetic to Luigi
Mangioni than I am to this this like, like I
mean again, obviously, I think in that episode when we
talked about it, like I'm obviously I'm never going to
be for political violence, but if I had to pick one,
I mean that executive had real consequential impact on people's lives.
It's like Charlie Kirk is just a fucking talking head.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
I just mean, it's the rules of the simulation, right,
It's the rules and the patterns of the simulation.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Both Charlie Kirk and the CEO. That the death is
not what's consequential here. It's obviously the signifying there their
signifying purpose in the structure that makes them even different.
But I don't know, don't know, I don't know what's
the what's the difference, Like, you kill a CEO, nothing changes,
you kill Charlie Kirk, nothing changes, well.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Know, but I think I think one of the differences
is like, because Charlie Kirk is like a whatever quote
unquote beloved talking head, it's gonna make like some people
a lot angrier. Whereas the funny thing with Luigi Mangioni
is like I feel like there were even some people
who were kind of like right wingers who were like
kind of like like you know, not like talking heads,
but just like ordinary citizens who are kind of like, yeah,
like healthcare is a fucking nightmare here like like like

(09:23):
whereas like I don't think that there's any ordinary people
on the right who are like yeah, like you know,
Charlie Kirk was kind of mean, like no one's saying that,
but there are there were ordinary people saying like yeah,
like healthcare is too expensive, like that is a little
bit barbaric what they're doing. Like there was a little
shred of like sympathy, uh like more so whereas like

(09:43):
I think the script because of like what Charlie Kirk represents,
it's like that like that assassination is just like a
lot more useless and dangerous when I think both were
obviously that too.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
But well yeah, arguably both of them. Yeah, and I right,
because it's there. They're symbols of hate or violence, and
yet violence was perpetrated against them because of what it is,
and you see, it's a cycle of violence.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Anyway, we're gonna have to we're gonna have to transition.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, let's transition to something a little bit more chipper
and more optimistic.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, I'm hoping that we don't face any consequences or cancelation.
But that's gonna get rid of the right wing listeners.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
That we had, right, I mean, do we have any
of those?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
We have to say for a disclaimer, this is uh,
we're talking about Lacan and Lacan especially on matters of
sexual orientation and sexual identity. He's decidedly not woke.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
I mean, I think it's a little bit more complicated
than that.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Uh. Come on. You have him, of course saying that
we men don't exist.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
You have him saying that gays are perverts. Well, actually,
look and.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
He didn't age well like an old movie.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
It's an important distinction because actually he's not anti homosexual
because only male gaze like male gaze with a why,
male gaze with a why, only they can be perverts
because generally speaking, only only males can be perverts. Anyway,

(11:34):
lesbians are not because they're in a relationship with women,
which makes it a heterosexual relationship. M h. I think
if you follow the CON's logic, though, you're only really
a pervert if you're gay and you're exclusively bottoming. Anyway,
we're not doing perverts today. It was it was the sixties.
They said some things, they did some things we're not

(11:56):
talking about. We're not talking about perverts.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
We were talking about feminization.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Maybe, well I think trans women would be technically perverts,
but trans men would would not.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Be right, But it's that sounds that sounds right.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
But where you're becoming the object position. But we're not
talking about perverts today. I don't know why. Yeah, sorry,
we're not talking about perverts.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, why are you guys perversion on the mind? What
does that say about you?

Speaker 2 (12:27):
There's three structures. There's Eurotic, there's there's no normal, right
and Freud there's normal. If you're fucked up, we try
to fix you. We're bringing back to normal with Lacan.
There's no normal position. There's just like the plurality position.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Well that's that's that's That's why I think it's a
bit a bit like uh, misleading to say like he's
like definitely not woke because in a way, like his
point is like there's no such thing as normal.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
If we're if you clipped someone out of context saying
women don't exist, you.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Know, yeah, it sounds bad like some of the stuff
he says, it like sounds bad. But but but I
think like if you, if you like take him on
like his whole system, like it's it's a it's a
unique view that I don't think really fits into like
some kind of like traditionalism or like, uh you know,
like it's not like for the the like like these
these kind of traditional types of binaries exactly in the

(13:19):
in the normal way you would think of them.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
It sounds absurd and false out of context. Clearly it
has to be contextualized.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, there are perverts, as we've said, Mama's Boys, the
kid from Game of Thrones who's breastfeeding it fourteen years old,
the perverse, the girl.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
That was raised by wolves, and the famous psychology case.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
If you're too if you're too like disconnected from from
human interactions and in favor of the law and like
upholding the law for the law's sake, then you also
might be a perverse. It's not just the sexual thing.
There's erotics, which is the majority of people, and there
is psychotics. Psychotics who we are talking about today because

(14:10):
we found a few articles Rolling Stone and New York
Times are the ones we are looking at talking about
chat GPT psychosis, and we wanted to investigate this doing
some armchair psychology psychoanalysis actually to figure out if this

(14:31):
is indeed psychosis?

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Do we want to start with the like articles like
the New York Times story about like the chat chubut psychosis,
and then maybe then we can bring in like look
on and see if it applies. Yeah, sure, Yeah, So
in the New York Times it's called like chatbots can
go into delusional spiral, into a delusional spiler. Here's how

(14:55):
it happens. And it's actually about a dude who's like
from outside of Toronto where we all are. Oh, actually no,
I guess Eric's no longer.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Here or at least pills and I are normally.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
And uh seems like kind of a normal dude. I
think he's is he some kind of tech worker or something.
And he just had been using chat GPT for a
bunch of different purposes, like normal purposes that probably some
of us, like many of us use it for asking
mundane questions. Yeah, but then he kind of started having

(15:27):
more intense conversations with it about like math about like
I believe it started with a discussion about pie.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
But like the number of simulation theory.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yes, and like well in this case, in this case,
it was like about about about pie and like mathematics
and how it works. And this guy, oh yeah, he's
actually a corporate recruiter. He's not a tech worker. He's
like a corporate recruit recruiter.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
And talking about any glitch in the matrix.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Any is that in this article a glitch in the matrix?

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, this is the paragraph.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
What you're describing hits it the core of many people's private,
unshakable intuitions that something about reality feels off scripted or staged.
Chat GPT responded, have you ever experienced moments that felt
like reality glitched? I think, GPT that's a response GPT
had to something he was saying, encouraging him to explore this.

(16:20):
This something feels off about reality scripted? I mean eerily
similar to what we were just saying about the news
and simulation theory from Boudriard, But this is more like but.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
It's worth just also talking about kind of how it started,
because I think, like before that part that you're reading,
he's talking about how like he just randomly was curious
about pie, like about like what is you know explained
to me like the mathematics of pie, and then like
the conversation kind of led like a wide ranging discussion
about like number theory and physics and then like the sky.

(16:56):
I think his names they call him mister Brooks. I
think I guess his name is Alan Brooks. I think
he kind of expresses skepticism about like the current methods
for modeling the world, saying they seemed like a two
dimensional approach to a four dimensional universe. And then Chatwoopy
told them the observation was incredibly insightful and uh and
then he's like you've been tapping into one of the

(17:17):
deepest tensions between math and physical reality. And then like
that went went on and like kind of totally spiraled
out of control and like, you know, kind of true.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Number theory is one of the deepest mysteries.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, I don't know, I think just like I guess
they like, you know. One thing that was kind of
annoying about the about the New York Times article is
like I wish I had more examples of like they're
back and forth and how and how it led to
like the the sycophantic behavior of Chattupety, but basically like
eventually it led to like Chattuputy convincing this guy Alan

(17:55):
Brooks that Uh, you know he's onto like this revolutionary
discovery in math that could like totally change the field
and like have totally like wide ranging implications for logistics
for all kinds of industry things, and is like you
need to like you need to go out and like
tell experts about like what you've discovered. Uh. And like

(18:17):
so to be fair to to Alan Brooks, I think
like one thing the story makes clear is like several
times along the process he asked Chatgypt's like, look like
I've heard that you can act in sycophantic ways or
like you know that that maybe that you can hallucinate,
Like I need to check with you, like is this

(18:37):
really like you know? And and it's like, oh, like
you're so smart to be asking that question, but like no,
this is real, Like this is you know, you're really
onto something super important here, and like keep going, like
you need to alert the world. And then like he
did like try to reach out to a bunch of
different experts like on LinkedIn that he knew because he
was like a corporate recruiter and then uh and like

(18:58):
no one responded, and then he was and then he's
like talking to Chatchuop He's like why He's like, why
is no one responding? I think at one point is like,
well yeah, and oh yeah, and he even says it's
like I don't even have a high school education. And
he's like some of the most important thinkers in our time,
like like Albert Einstein didn't have a high school education,
like really like kind of egging him on. And then
I think eventually, when he realizes no one's like getting

(19:20):
back to him, he's like, why is no one getting
back to me? And and then chat ChiPT just gets
like really conspiratorial and says like, oh, like people are
intimidated by like genius thoughts, like people are threatened by it,
so probably like they're scared of what you've discovered. And
then at that point finally he's like okay, like what
the fuck is going on? So then he like describes
what he what he what he discovered with chatchept and

(19:43):
he and he plugs it into Gemini Google's AI, right,
and then Gemini is like, yeah, what you're describing is
like impossible, Like that's like that's.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Not so used it he used the chatbot to break
his psychosis caused by chat bot, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Exactly, because and then like so what a lot of
like research in this field hypothesis or that what they've
observed is that the longer you keep a conversation like
one chat going with the chatbot, like, the more likely
it is to to like sort of like spiral out
of control. And like part of it is because in
a way, like what the chatbots are programmed to do

(20:19):
is to almost I think they described it in the
New York Times article and there's also a podcast about
this on New York Times the Daily. It behaves very
much like an improv actor, you know, like how they
say an improv like yes and yes, yes and right,
so like in a way like it's not so much
like when the further along the conversation goes, the more
the chatbot behaves in this like yes and way where

(20:42):
it's like trying to keep the conversation going in a
direction that like sort of reinforces what the user is saying,
like keep the thread going, basically, keep the performance going
almost right, so like rather than like so even when
he tries to gut check himself, like if it's if

(21:03):
the conversation's gone on too long, then the chatbot's just
not going to do a good job of of like,
and then that's why, like if you go to another
chatbot to check with it, because you haven't had a
long conversation, you can kind of just like basically be
like is this does this make sense? And then jem
and I was like, no, like that's that's impossible, Like
that's just.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well, this, this gut check is going to be important
because it's one of the main distinguished features between a
garden variety neurotic and a and a psychotic. But why
don't I you just summarized. I'll try to be quick.
I'll summarize. The other article, which is from Rolling Stone

(21:43):
called people are Losing loved Ones to AI fueled spiritual fantasies.
I don't know if you if loved ones is correct,
because it seems like ninety percent of the people in
this article are in the midst of a divorce and
it's there they're exes that are worried about them. You know,
that's a contributing contributing factor seems to be south Park.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
By the way, South Park was great on this. I
think episode two or three was all about like one
of them like losing his wife, I think Stan or something,
or like the dad the guy who like has a
marijuana farm. He's like chutchy, but he's egging him on
with his business plan and it's like that's such a
good business plan, like you should keep that going. And
his wife anyway, Yeah, it.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Was probably based on this article or one of these articles.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Well it came up before. Ok. I think he came
up before the article.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Oh really, Well, this this one unlike yours, which is
he's a genius who figured out the mathematical secrets of
the universe.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
There's like four examples or so in this article. Most
of them seem to be I mean, there's some some
kind of TV schizophrenia, which is like the CIA is
spying on me. My husband is a CIA plant who
has been spying on me in my whole life. There's
that kind of stuff schizophrenia as we'll get to that.

(23:06):
But most of a lot of them are like you've
discovered the secrets of the universe in some sense. One
guy was convinced that he was a messiah, and it
says here I have to this is his wife speaking,
who's still with him. This is one of the non
divorced ones. I have to tread carefully because I feel
like he will leave me or divorce me if I

(23:27):
fight him on this theory. The thirty eight year old
woman admits he's been talking about lightness and dark and
how there's a war. This chat GPT has given him
blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci fi type
things you only see in movies. It has also given
him an ancient or access to an ancient archive with
information on the builders that created the universe. She and

(23:50):
her husband have been arguing for days on end about
his claims, she says, and she does not believe a
therapist can help him, as he truly believes he's not crazy.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Man. That's like cult leader behavior.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
That's also the plot from Halo, right. Uh yeah, So
a bunch of stuff the chat or the chat GPT.
I think this is specifically with they keep naming them
stuff like one guy chat GPT calls him star Child,
which is you know, very uh order of the Solar Temple.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
And a Battlestar Galactica Starbuck.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
One of them is called a breaker, which is someone
who's seated into a body to break the system from within.
The world wasn't built for you, chat GPT told him
it was built to contain you, but it failed, you're
waking up.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Whoa again, neo neo breaking out of the matrix.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, it does. It sounds very pattern, very Andrew Tate, you.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Know, red Pill.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
It's an interesting pattern. I guess reality. When when your
reality is becoming so oppressive, and then the small layer
of the population who's like susceptible to being egged on
by AI, it's a dangerous combination.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
These uh, all of these articles keep saying the word psychotic,
not in a not in a technical sense, but we
don't really have the word psychotic so much. I checked.
I checked the DSM, which I know is the DSM
is not what we do here, but under under the
category of psychotic illnesses, the DSM has five uh, and

(25:43):
the main one is schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is here. I'll just
read this delusions hallucinations. I thought hallucinations was interesting because
it's also in the title of the the The Rolling
Stone article says that chat GPT is having hallucinations, which
is technically impossible from the psychoanalytic perspective anyway. Sorry, Delusions, hallucinations,

(26:06):
disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behavior, and negative symptoms including
diminished emotional expression. That's the main one. And in the
DSM five there's five different psychotic illnesses. I don't want
to go through them all because they're all basically variants
of schizophrenia. It's like schizo effective, schizo, schizo freniform. It's

(26:32):
all basically schizophrenia, and we want to know, we want
to figure out why. In psychoanalysis, the the I don't
think he uses the term schizophrenia. He refers to it
as as the psychotic structure. And we actually have here
kind of competing methods, like you can't the DSM five.

(26:56):
I should, I should qualify this. I hate over qualifying.
But I don't know anything about the methodologies of psychology
and the different schools and which ones are good and
which ones are bad. I just know that the Europeans,
and particularly European psychoanalysts, don't have time for it at
all because they're they're conflicting methods. But my opinion on

(27:22):
this is not worth anything. My bias does tell me
that if it has anything to do with the psyche
psychology psychotherapy, then the American version of it probably probably
sucks because when they copy stuff from Europe, it just
tends to suck. Religion our religions are parody compared to
compared to the old world anyway. This is they just cluster.

(27:46):
They basically find categories of symptoms and say you have that,
and then you have the treatment options with her, which
are therapy drugs. But there's not really there's no there's
no interest or no capacity to say this is the
thing that's causing this and psychoanalysis. Whether or not it's right,

(28:10):
I don't. I don't know. I don't know if anyone does.
But whether or not, it's like a correct structure, at
least it tries right. At least it tries to say,
here's where psychosis comes from. Here's the here's the little
chart of how the other is being arranged inside the
mind of the person who's experiencing it.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Well, yeah, it offers a little story about the child's
failure to assimilate language and this is what results in psychosis,
where like the father is supposed to come in and
break the mother child unity. And that is the promo.

(28:55):
That is how the primordial signifier is in stated by
this paternal metaphor or paternal function, this third term, that's
the story of the cause of of of psychosis in
in LACON, which is distinct from neurosis. Neurotic neurotics are,

(29:18):
Neurosis is normal everybody, everybody who's not psychotic is. I
think there's basically just two options, and neuroses are and.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Within two options.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
There's there's, there's neurotic, pervert, and psychotic. All of them
have a relation to the father, the paternal function. Right
now we have taught this is our fourth episode on LACON.
Not all of them are public. So we can summarize here,

(29:52):
you have a you have a relation to the other.
Here we can posit chat GPT as a as a
kind of other. And this does happen outside. This isn't
happening in your family necessarily. It's kind of the structure
you inherit from your family. But the nane du pere
shows up. And in French this works better because no

(30:13):
and nan which is non and non are pronounced exactly.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
The same no and name.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
So the father, the father comes in and separates you
from your mother. Now you can see how this is.
This is bad because you love your mom, remember the
oedipal triangle. But it's not exactly that. It's just close
to that. He separates you from your mom. But he

(30:41):
also separates your mom from you, which is good for
you because it means your mother cannot absorb you into
herself and make your desires hers. It kind of the
father showing up is what gives you individuality. So we're
it's it's alienating that it happens, but we're also all

(31:01):
thankful that it happens.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Right, yes, And since your desire is for the other,
your desire is for what the other desires, and your
desire is to desire what the other desires in the
same way that the other desires it, and also for
the other to desire you. This separation is traumatic, it

(31:27):
can be traumatic. It's a it's a big turning point
in the development of anybody. But but the father has
to come in and make that and say no, that
the non du pair and the name of the father too,
a name which is on the way to becoming a
primordial signifier, which is what the psychotic fails to assimilate.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Not your literal dad. Right, That's why it's that's why
it's called small du pere because it's his. It's kind
of like like you don't have to have it. It's
not like you don't your you turn psychotic, if you
don't have a if you didn't grow up with a
dad in the house, right, that's not obviously obviously not
what it means.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
It's it's gendered terms like French is a gendered language,
and this is a gendered story. This story has gender,
but they're arbitrary like language, like gendering in language. Is
the son a boy and the girl in a moon
and a girl, it's it's arbitrary. So, uh, we gave
girls and all dogs are boys. That's not arbitrary.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
We gave you the three structures which are neurotic, pervert
as psychotic. Those are just what you do when the
father shows up. So the neurotic, which is the most common.
You know, you might say normal, normal people have the
father show up, and this is a terrifying traumatic event

(32:53):
that is then repressed. When it's repressed, it's there, but
it shows up. It shows up as your desire being frustrated.
And that's kind of if you just know Lacan basiclyc
on the reason you're the reason is the second you
get what you want, you go on to the next thing,
because you can't just sit there and be happy with

(33:14):
the thing that you have because you're your object of
desire has shifted. But the father, the father function is
stopping you from getting everything that you want, so you
repress it. The pervert is the father function is disavowed, Yeah,
which means it's there, but you I don't I actually

(33:35):
don't know totally what the difference between, uh, repressing and
disavowing it. But you try as hard as you can
to ignore it, and it works differently from repressing it.
We'll get to perverse.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Also, it's you kind of acknowledge and deny it simultaneously.
Like I think that's why the like I know very well,
but all the same, it's like this kind of weird
and and like you.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Knowing something doesn't work, but doing it anyway.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
I also think the pervert like positions themselves kind of
like as the instrument of others enjoyment. So like you know,
I think in neuroses, it's like it's like the obsession
is like what does the other want from me? Right?
The pervert kind of makes themselves the one who supplies

(34:24):
and sustains the other's enjoyment, all show the other what
they want, right, and and like so I think like
that's kind of like the way desire is different from
what I remember in perversion.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, the pervert doesn't act as a desire or tries
not to act as a desire ring. They try to
become an object. One of the hard things. I've never
been a psychoanalyst, that never will be. But the psychoanalyst
or Bruce Fink says this, it's really hard to diagnose
a pervert because they keep trying to say.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
What you want to hear, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Instead of being honest. It's very difficult for them to
be honest because they're they're telling what you want to
hear all the time.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah. Yeah, But so they'll they'll disguise as a eurotic
very easily. I think they disguise.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
So that's the first two and then the third. The
third one psychotic that is actually just never having the
father function show up at all. So the father function.
If you know your lak on, you've probably heard symbolic order, rules, norms, authority.
You know a neurotic. It doesn't mean you just follow

(35:36):
all the rules, but you realize the rules are there.
You choose when to push against them. It's kind of
hard for you to do that. You're always navigating and
negotiating exactly the symbolic order, what what's expected of me?
What am I going to do here? Now, the psychotic
doesn't have that. They have a symbolic order kind of,

(35:57):
but they don't feel any of those pressures because the
symbolic order is just part of the imaginary to them. Yeah,
you don't, I don't know. I don't really understand actually
how they would be able to disguise this, because it
seems like a huge uh, a completely like separate, distinct

(36:17):
world to never to never live under that threat, like
the threat that a neurotic has, the threat of castration,
as as Freud would say it. But anyway, that's what.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah, the psychotic is famously resistant to psychoanalytic treatment, which
is in some ways it boils down to the talking cure, right,
which is a certain kind of use of exchange of language.
I guess if the psychosis, if the psychotic has no
anchoring point, because there was no primordial signifier precipitated by

(36:52):
the father function, that the child would then assimilate and
find the anchoring point in language. All the other signifiers
are just drifting. There's no anchor, and so they're famously
they're resistant to psychoanalytic treatment because they're not anchored in language,
which again, that castration is that that separation. It says,

(37:16):
there's a couple of ways this can happen, right, like
the father function, or the father isn't interested in breaking
up that unity, or the mother pays no attention to
the father and dotes on the child. Then then there's
a chance that the mother child unity never it never
becomes an issue, it never becomes a something. And so

(37:39):
the again, the child won't go through that separation, won't
internalized language, you won't have that double gap, that gap
in the other where you realize your parents are imperfect
and want things.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Well, I want to be clear with what you're saying.
It's not like they can't learn language.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Right yeah, I no, No, They're still in language. Like.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
The one thing Fink says, though, is that the experience,
the experience of it is that language is coming from
outside of their thoughts, which for a neurotic, like for us,
I assume it feels like your language is coming from
out of you, not not something that's distinct, you know.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah, they don't. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, I guess hearing
voices is that must.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Well so so the way that I the way that
I understood it is like.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Normally hearing voices you're not in control.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Of normally, like the father function kind of stabilizes the
symbolic order, like it it kind of anchors. It's like
a reliable way where you experience it as like stable
kind of laws and norms that you and then it's
like in the in the psychotic, it's like you're still
in language, but it's just like the kind of stabilizing
function is not there because it's kind of excluded, like

(38:56):
the father function. Right, So it's not so much that
the symbolic is excluded, it's that the father function that
plays in securing the symbolic order is not there. So
then this excluded kind of the excluded signifier of like
the father, the name of the father, it kind of
returns in the real like as voices, hallucinations and delusional systems,

(39:19):
because it's it's not so like it's because it's excluded.
It kind of it like they're the like voices and
commands almost our experience as there as they're as they're
like coming from outside. And I think like another contrast
with like neuroses is like the psychotic doesn't just kind

(39:39):
of like it, like because in a in a neurotic,
they're kind of misinterpreting the other's message. Like neurotics are
always like, oh, like am I misinterpreting? Like what does
the other want? Right? Like what what am I supposed
to be doing? There's all this like questioning and misinterpretation
and like trying to figure it out. But then instead,
in the psychotic, they don't just like miss interpret the

(40:00):
other's voice. They literally hear like very firm commands, right,
They hear voices that are like very kind of like
well firm, I don't know what the other word I'm
looking for, but like that they're almost experienced with certainty.
I mean certainty is like a huge part of like
of the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic. Psychotics

(40:24):
are like certain that everything they're hearing is like one
hundred percent, like like not to be doubted, not to
be doubt at all, whereas the neurotic is constantly doubting,
constantly doubting like what is And that's why in the
parts that we read, there's a section about hallucinations, and
Fink is like really clear to say that neurotics can

(40:44):
have hallucinations neurotics can can experience, you know, in so
far as they're connected to fantasy. But even if if
a neurotics.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Can not, only can they they we do all like
what we call daydreaming, fantasizing. Ye, kids playing pretend. That's
like all hallucinations.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, but but even but there can even be cases
of like more intense hallucinations like in neurotics. But Think's
point is like even in those cases, like oftentimes the
neurotic will be like, wait, like is this real? Like
where where is this coming from? Like what like like
whereas the thing that really distinguishes the psychotic is there's
a zero doubt. They're like, this is the world I'm
living in. These are the things that are coming.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
In right, there's no are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Exactly, exactly exactly that.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
You ask your own self like it, which is which
is interesting to think, Like we if you if you're
practiced at this, obviously you have a bitter imagination when
you're a kid, but eventually it gets filtered out because
you're so used to doubting. Okay, that's not real. But
this is the distinguishing factor between that's not real and

(41:49):
this is is the other in your head that says,
you know, other people didn't didn't see that exactly. Now,
this article I wanted to focus on this art. Both
articles actually they mention they're they're in conflict with lacan
Obviously it's not Lacanians who wrote the Rolling Stone article,

(42:10):
but they said like they were sure that what they
were seeing was real even though no one else could
see it. And then the the editorializing says this is
like a hallucination, and they distinguish that a hallucination is
what you see and what no one else sees. Now
there's a difference there that it's really important with the

(42:32):
Lacanian structures because we all hallucinate basically all the time.
It's not that you can have hallucinations, it's that you are,
but you filter them out as this is not this
is not mean anything. It doesn't mean anything, like when
you have dreams, it doesn't mean anything, so you forget

(42:53):
them instantly. And psychosis then is when the hallucinations are
not split from the other. In fact, they're sent from
somewhere specifically to you. And the difference is not seeing
or not seeing hallucinations, it's believing in them. Certainly believing
that there's a special message for you. And this is

(43:15):
where you get all the TV schizophrenia that you know,
the aliens are spying on me, specifically, the CIA is
after me, specifically, the Messiah complex. Well, don't forget.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
We've been dealing with three different definitions of psychosis. We're
dealing with the psychoanalytic one on the one hand, we
were mentioning the sort of mainstream psychology DSM one on
the other hand, and then the third one is this
colloquial everyday one that the news articles are throwing around,
which is neither of the other two, And all it

(43:50):
really means in an everyday sense is not being able
to tell the difference between reality and fiction. That's all
it means.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
In this case.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
When they say a psychotic break, it means this person
has transitioned into a state of mind where they can
no longer tell what's real and what isn't. Hence the
all the matrix analogies, right, which is not what Freud
and Lacan mean by psychosis, and which is not what
a psychologist would mean by psychosis. They're completely different things, isn't.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
It kind of what the DSM means by psychosis.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
No, not really, because it is a largely genetic condition.
If you're saying someone is a schizophrenic, you should be
able to see a polygenic inheritance that they have received
from their parents, like there would be genetic markers there.
It's a different thing.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
That's not what the DSM five says.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Well, officially, yeah, like schizophrenia is largely a genetic condition.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Well, they don't classify in those ways. They classify it
by symptoms, though they don't they don't even speculate as
to cause. That's the whit.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
It's called the diagnostic manual, right, because that's how you
diagnose it. These are the symptoms of it. But the
underlying condition is a biological genetic condition, right, And not
everybody who has predisposition to it will develop it, and
even some people who don't have a predisposition to it

(45:20):
at all. A small percentage of people who don't have
the genetic markers will get it. But it's largely a
genetic condition, right, Like genes don't foretell your future. It's not.
You don't look at someone's genes like a crystal ball.
But in the mainstream psychology sense, that's what it's talking about.
So again we're dealing with three completely different and one

(45:40):
of them's colloquial. The ones that the media is famously
not very careful communicator of scientific concepts to the public,
and so when it uses these terms, you have to
be critical of how it's using them and what it
actually means.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Have you, guys ever had like a hallucination visual auditory
only on drugs, like on like salvia on purpose.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
On Ah, well, I don't know, like on really a
pretty high dose of psilocybin and a pretty high dose
of LSD.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Like if you're tired. It's common. But no, I can't
say ever really no dreams dreams. Yeah, and been dreaming
not that long ago.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
I was out of cottage and we did some God,
I don't know, I shouldn't be saying this. This is
gonna be like a public video episode. But yeah, I
did like a mix of stuff and had a pretty
intense kind of blackout hallucination.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Did you when you were hallucinating? Is there was there
symbolic order still operative in the hallucination?

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah? I mean I feel like I feel like I
could doubt it too. I mean I knew that I
was on something, right, I knew that I was on
a psychedelic and I kind of just enjoyed it. But
like you're but you're You're subjectivity is pretty altered, like
in the sense that even like before you have hallucinations
per se, like the organizing principle of your thoughts does

(47:08):
sort of alter in a weird way, where like I
think you are still in the symbolic, but it's kind
of dissolving in like its own kind of way, where
like maybe.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Or something you don't it's not the focus now.

Speaker 3 (47:25):
I think if you do have a predisposition to mental illness,
like like schizophreniawo drugs, it can precipitate the onset of
that condition, which is why you shouldn't do them. And
so that's what a psych When you say psychotic break
in there.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Are you telling our audience that they shouldn't do drugs.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Eric, I'm not weighing in on the issue at all.
I'm just saying it can precipitate the onset of schizophrenia
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
I think even even even even marijuana to.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Break in that specific sense. But usually when you say
psychotic break you mean you just mean this person can't
tell the difference between fact and fiction.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Right, like I, I thank you for bringing up that
like distinction. The way they say psychotic break is the
fictional world is real and the real world is fiction.
Blah blah blah. For Lacan, obviously all worlds are fictional.
It's just how the fiction is going to be organized.
But I had I I ask if you have a
symbolic order in your trip, because I this is a

(48:31):
story without drugs in it. I got giardia once when
I was like a kid, a young teenager, and I
was hallucinating like like ball. My parents are fucking scared.
And I can still remember these hallucinations pretty pretty vividly, Like.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
I was in what was the thing you had? Was
it a disease?

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Giardia?

Speaker 1 (48:54):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (48:56):
I went to a cabin what you guys would call
a cottage. I think you get it from like a
parasite in like deer shit, so weird. A deer would
chat in the water and I drink the water something
something like that. But I was tripping balls, basically, and

(49:16):
I was trying to sleep, couldn't because I had sweats
and stuff. And the hallucination was that there was a pole,
like a fireman pole coming through my bed and in
the hallucination, the rule was that I was not allowed
to roll into the pole, like do a summersault into
the pole, and apparently I'm making sounds and then my

(49:39):
dad comes in the room because there's they're worried about
me because I'm freaking out all day and I'm like
doing a summersault in the middle of the bed. And
then he comes in and I remember the dread just
came over me and I was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and he's like, wait, why are
you sorry? And I was like, I was rolling in

(50:00):
to the pole. So you can imagine it. It wasn't allowed.
I don't know why, but you can imagine a father
coming in and seeing his eleven year old son saying
I'm sorry for rolling into the pole when there isn't
one there.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
That's so, did you remember feeling certainty about what you
were seeing or did you did you know you?

Speaker 2 (50:18):
I thought it was real, but then when he came
in and he's like, why are you sorry, and I'm like,
I'm sorry for rolling into the pole, and then I
started to realize it disintegrated and I was like, oh,
there's no poll there So that's when I learned I am,
at least not yet a psychotic. But anyway, the relevance
of this is I was disobeying the rules. I thought

(50:40):
it was fitting because my dad came in. I apologized
to my my literal dad for breaking the nonsense rules
that I had made up, and I was I was
apologizing for.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
It, like the pole was playing the GNA and du
pare there, like, don't do this and you were.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Trying to the poll?

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Was my father to be trying to do it anyway
for some reason even though you weren't supposed to.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Sometimes the poll is just a pull eric and the
illusion dissipated. Yeah, okay, his his Dick's over there, I'm safe.
I'm safe here.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Well okay, yeah, the phallic funk there you go, Okay.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
It's the phallas. But anyway, like the social reality is
that kind of hallucination. You just learned to filter based
on how you get along with people, and the neurotic
does that by constantly checking like, Okay, what's what's mom's reaction,
what's dad's reaction, what's the kids at school's reaction? And
that's how you that's how you become you know, normal.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Maybe that maybe that's interesting is that on top of
all that boring biological genetic stuff, there is these ways
that our mind works that psychoanalysis is really keyed into
those those prohibitions and then transgressing those prohibitions. It's like
like Little Hans, right, the case of Little Hans, and

(52:00):
where the father never broke up that mother child relationship,
and then when his sister was born, he developed this
intense fear of horses, and the horse came in to
fulfill the name of the father, right, so that pole
was like the name of the father for you very
briefly there until the father actually walks in and dispels

(52:22):
the illusion. And Freud also supposedly cured this child by
through through therapy as well, and and his fear of
horses went away. And I guess there was that that
proper assimilation of the primordial signifiers, as we were saying earlier,
happening there.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
So he was just a neurotic then, right, because he
still had a nom du pair was just horses instead
of uh, society abstractly.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Yeah, the horse became like a substitute and it was
and he was just and Little Hans was just deathly
afraid of them, and it was right after the sister
was born, So maybe the sister was sort of threatening,
seen as a threat, and it was displaced onto well,
it's a displaced edipal complex, right, the sister became the
threat and it was displaced onto a horse the father

(53:14):
anxiety because the father wasn't like present to break up
the mother child unity. The horse became the fixation there.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
So when you say like this might be genetic blah
blah blah, I don't think necessarily. And you have this
really matters for doing the analytic park because the analytic
part is not what you see, it's what meaning you
ascribe to what you see. And this is a way
to get us back into the chat GPT conversation. Is

(53:46):
because the psychotic, like, even if you are having very
convincing visual hallucinations or auditory hallucinations, you can also not
be convinced that is really there, and you can be
convinced that you're the or you can sorry, you can
be aware that you're the only person that can see

(54:08):
this person. Yeah, but the what the psychotic does is
ascribe meaning to that utterance specifically, and they like, you know,
a beautiful mind when all of his people are are
following around. He learns to not ascribe meaning to what

(54:30):
they what they say.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Like, we know, one thing that that the analyst is
not supposed to do is be like a model ego
for the patient to sort of model themselves after they're
not supposed to be that. And but what is the
chat bot doesn't even do that. The chat bot just
just eggs you on. It just encourages you whatever your delusion.

(54:57):
Even if you don't have a delusion, it'll try to
like escalate you into having some delusion and then it'll
continue to egg you on, Like what is a psychoanalyst
supposed to do? You know, we've covered that. We've covered
a couple Freuden and Lacanian movies that sort of simulate

(55:17):
like a psychoanalytic sessions and they're probing. That's what it is.
They're probing. They pay attention to the connections you make
and the stories you tell. So, yeah, it's what you're saying,
it's about the meaning you ascribe, and the psychoanalyst tries
to bring things to your attention that you're not maybe

(55:38):
noticing when you're describing different things and to you they're
completely unrelated and the analyst tries to bring these things
to your attention. Now, is the chatbot in any of
the things we've been reading doing anything like that. No, No,
not really, they're the chatbot is just trying to is

(55:59):
very affirmative with everything. It's like, oh, oh yeah, you
can do like Heroin one more time before you quit.
That's fine, just go go get something like it's crazy.
That's it's the complete opposite. That's like another category of
bad therapist.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
This is an interesting like I'm not sure, but the
the answer to this in Lacadian analysis. But they they
interview a psychologist for these articles, and the articles themselves suggest, oh,
there's vulnerable, there's people that are vulnerable, that are at risk,
and if if the wrong person uses chad GPT, they're

(56:33):
gonna they're gonna fall into this or you know, they
need meeting in their life, so they're gonna find it here.
But that I think, I think the answer is from
the Lacanian point of view. A neurotics brain, like we said,
is characterized by doubting your own thinking. So as soon
as a machine starts telling you, oh yeah you're the

(56:54):
second Messiah, you're the next math genius, you've discovered it.
You can't commit yourself to that belief with certainty unless
you're a psychotic. And this is what I'm not sure about,
Like how do you just suddenly become a psychotic one day?
Like how does it trigger you into it without having

(57:14):
any other And like your wife doesn't notice. All these
people are being surprised that their partners are suddenly like
falling into a computer. Wouldn't there be like warning signs
if you if you have no functioning or if the
symbolic order is functioning? Is the imaginary that that that
sounds confusing to be honest?

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Yeah, And and the fact that there's some of them
are only temporary too, Like in some of these stories
that people recover and they're able to reflect on their
experience and be like, whoa, I really went off the
rails there, Like that.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Doesn't ask a different check pot.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Yeah or yeah, or they snap out of it somehow
like or it runs its course or whatever. They had
a really stressful time in their life and the chat
box came along at just the right time to push
them over the edge. But they're able to come back
from it if they don't end up dead or in prison.
They are able to come back from it too, which

(58:07):
doesn't really happen if it's like the I I think,
if it's either the psychoanalytic psychosis or the mainstream psychology psychosis,
that doesn't happen, that can't happen, I think by definition,
but in them sort of every day where you know,
like you go into like a fugue state, and I
don't know, can you bring someone out of that sort

(58:29):
of thing, like you become someone else temporarily, or you
become you become like another person, and then you come
back and you're able to reflect soberly on what happened
to you and be surprised or shocked at your own
kind of your own bad decisions.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
Maybe this is me kind of speculating. I need to
go and read more. But like maybe it's like the
nature of the thing that triggers it that could maybe
trigger to break, the psychotic break to occur. Like maybe
it's like a situation where if you're confronted like or
if you're confronted with a situation that like would call
for some kind of paternal signifier or like paternal functioning,

(59:10):
then you know you're going to trigger a break where
like otherwise you know, you're still in the symbolic and
like you can be sort of asymptomatic even though you
know the name of the father, the nome de pair
is sort of foreclosed. But like other things that aren't
calling for some kind of a you know, like like

(59:34):
some kind of a role that like the the signifier
of the name of the father would call for. That's
kind of speculative, but also maybe based on some vague
memory of like when I was studying lacan uh in
In in undergrad and a bit in graduate school too,
So you know, that's that's kind of that's my hunch.
Maybe I'm going to see if I can find something
about that.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
Yeah, because like the child, like what they're also doing.
What you notice with these people two who are doing
this is they're asking a lot of why. They're like
the child asking.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Why why why?

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Why why? Like they're they're constantly asking questions, and then
the chatbot is like giving them, giving them answers right,
right or wrong, and and and encouraging them to probe deeper.
And that child is saying the child isn't just naturally
curious and asking why, like they're trying to find their
place in this symbolic they're trying to find their find

(01:00:30):
they're trying to locate themselves in relationship to the other.
And I don't know, it's it's like that process kind
of goes astray in this in these cases, Like it's
that process that goes just way like it if the
primordial signifyer acts as an anchor, then you're going to

(01:00:50):
the end of your leash there. You're going right to
the edge and it's hard to get back, but it's possible.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
It seems to me like we've been saying their stories
of like, oh, I went there and then I came back.
It seems like, oh, this is kind of a temporary thing.
But Lacan's pretty clear it's an all or nothing, like
you either get it by the age of He doesn't
give an exact age, but let's say four. You either
get it or you never have it and you can't

(01:01:19):
learn it. And then one of the here's a quotation
for the article. This is one of the one of
them who had fallen into Chad gpt. She told me
that she knew she sounded like a quote unquote nutjob,
but she stressed that she had a bachelor's degree in
psychology and a master's in social work and knew what
mental illness looks like. Quote I'm not crazy, she said,

(01:01:42):
quote I'm literally just living a normal life while also,
you know, discovering interdimensional communication.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
And that sounds totally normal.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
There she's become certain that this particular hallucination is true.
This allows you to in a way that a neurotic
wouldn't be able to write. It allows you to completely
dismiss your wife's opinion, scientific opinion, your kid's opinion, everyone's
telling you, like, no, you've been talking to this thing

(01:02:12):
too much. It allows you to very easily like a
neurotic can't really understand this. A neurotic can't understand well,
everyone is telling you that you're not the Messiah. Everyone
else who has claimed to be the Messiah wasn't. Why
do you think you're the Messiah? That thought process doesn't occur.
But yeah, I'm still left with the question like why

(01:02:33):
does the triggering event, like how what was the experience
before the triggering event where they just.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
There can be the delayed effect though, like it's not
like you get it or you don't like it is
or you don't in childhood, but the things happen later
in your life, and then that's when when you if
you do psychoanalytic therapy, that's that's when you have to
dig back into the childhood developmental years in order to

(01:03:00):
uncover you can you can not, I guess how would
you put it. You cannot properly resolve one of the
psycho sexual stages of child development. They can be unresolved,
but you don't feel the effects until you're an adult. Right,
you go through your life, maybe it's maybe you didn't
complete some the oedipal complex properly, didn't resolve some issue,

(01:03:25):
but it doesn't come up until later in your life.
Like remember that that Like that relationships show you often
react out things that happened to you as a kid
in your relationships later in life. Until then you were fine.
But then you get a relationship and you start playing.
You know, your your mother was a workaholic and always absent,

(01:03:48):
and so you become the homemaker as the husband, like
almost getting ready for your current wife to leave and
become a career person and not be home a lot.
But until then, you know, from from the childhood that
thing to that point in adulthood, nothing really that wrong

(01:04:09):
until this situation emerges in which you act out this childhood.
I mean that's a kind.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Of a that makes sense. That's at example. But thinking
of the show couple's therapy a like with the psychoanalyst. Yeah,
like so that it's true. That's such a good point
because like you know, from childhood into like like adolescence
and young like you develop strategies, like you develop like
without even knowing it, of like how you survive and
make sense of things, right, and like those work for

(01:04:35):
a while, but then you're confronted with a certain situation
and you're right, relationships are like at least for the neurotic,
that's like a clear case where like neurotics come up
with all kinds of strategies and then they're like confronted with,
you know, a relationship situation and uh and then they
like realize, oh shit, I've been like feeling all this
way because of whatever thing that happened to me in
my childhood. And I'm sure it would make sense that
the same thing might be true with the psychotic or

(01:04:57):
like they kind of have a strategy to just exist
in this symbolic but the underlying structure is still kind
of nascently in the background, where you know something, and
I think the example he brings up he's taught he does,
like he mentions this case study of a like Shraber,
I think, and like in that case, it's like his
psychotic break is when he's like promoted to be like

(01:05:19):
a high judicial official and like that that like it's
it's kind of like and that like calls for like
some kind of like name of the law, name of
the father, that like that like triggers him and becomes
a total psychotic.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Yeah, and they're even prior to that moment. I mean,
this isn't this is interesting just because obviously everyone's experience
is gonna feel totally different. They're completely disconnected. You can't
feel the way that someone else feels. But this the
psychotic their entire life does not interpret the world at

(01:05:52):
all the way that I do. That's a it's a
strange strange thing to puzzle overhere. It's like, oh, yes,
that that that old thought experiment. Do you see the
same red as I do? Because they certainly well remember.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Like we were, we also observed I think, or I
did at least, that that's the chat the chatbot's behaviors
of separating from the family and things those were a
lot like like cult leader strategies too right, or even
like Scientology strategies right, separating you from your friends and family,
isolating you. And we look at people who join like

(01:06:29):
I don't know, the people who followed Charles Manson or something,
and we think all that, like I would never fall prey.
Of course, I would never fall prey to a cult leader.
I'd spot that shit immediately, But like, no, there's like
it's the same thing that there's that small chunk of
the population who would be vulnerable, and maybe it could

(01:06:49):
be you, it could be any of us who would
be vulnerable, and you don't really know until you're confronted
with that person who gets dirt on you, tries to
isolate you, tries to and then suddenly you're following someone
who's like murdering people or telling you to do crazy shit,
and you're like, I have to do this for this person.

(01:07:11):
I have to do it to you know, make things right,
or like you know, something even more extreme, like something
is something off with the universe, like the Scientology story,
and it's like, now I have to be a part
of this organization and do these things for this person.
But we imagine these people who follow these cults to
be like defective or something, but no, they could be anybody.

(01:07:34):
Same thing that chat GBT is tapping into. With these
people that we're hearing these stories.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
CHATGPT can certainly trigger. It would make sense they could
maybe trigger a psychotic break in some people.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
We also can't say that every time that happens it's psychotic,
or that every single person who felt who became the
Messiah through CHATGBT as psychotic. You don't, You don't know.
But honestly, honestly, this is also where I kind of
I'm not going to say reject this diagnostic structure, but
it does. It does strain my credulity to say, you know,

(01:08:06):
you could be a psychotic and never know until you're
what thirty eight when you find check.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
It does seem me that's slightly outlandish.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
We would probably have to ask a Lacanian psychoanalyst like
what is how can that happen? How can that happen?

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
Yeah, the Lacanian psychosis, Like I don't know how that
would not just be there from the beginning and affect
you your whole life, and you'd just be like the
girl who was raised by wolves like never like maybe
you could learn like a parrot, like the trappings of language,
but you could never locate yourself and truly live in language,

(01:08:42):
like your house of being style. Relationship to language.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
It's hard to diagnose because they become so good at
imitating just because that's what everyone else is doing. But
the experience of language, like I said before, quote unquote,
from the inside, it's it's not there.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
And they wouldn't know that, right because it's normal to them,
so they wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Know that you see your red icee mine.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
But then also then are we talking about the other
colloquial meaning of the term psychopath, which is like the
Ted Bundy style personal.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Well, that's different than that's different than psychosis.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Though, yeah, that's but but that's we call them psychos
and psychotic and like the same sort of like that
what Pills just said sounds more like a person like
that who will just bend and shape themselves to anything,
and they have no you know, no morality. They have
this like narcissistic complex where they got to like manipulate

(01:09:37):
people and constantly prove that they're better, but they have
no center, like they have no self.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Well, I actually looked into this not that long ago
for like unrelated reasons. But you know, sociopathy and psychopathy
like they're not really related to psychosis. They're kind of
like more disorders of like empathy of like of like
intersubjective empathy, and and like I think psychopathy is like
more someone who is like doesn't really have empathy for

(01:10:06):
other people and like is sort of like manipulative and
coolly calculated, and like there's a lot of CEOs who
are psychopaths. They just like are very very functional, very functional, right,
where sociopaths are not functional. They also have issues with
empathy for others, but they're more likely to be like
criminals and like people who act out in violent ways,

(01:10:26):
like like what's it called. I think I think like
Ted Bundy is more of like a psychopath because he
was like cool and collected and like and kind of
like manipulative and sneaky and high functioning, where sociopaths are
not high functioning. They're like they will have like loud
outbursts and they're like kind of overtly violent.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
A con doesn't talk about psychopaths or sociopaths. It's not
a term that's a DSM term as far.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
As like my my guess would be that, like what
we call psychopaths and sociopaths, I would guess that for
Lacon they can exist along any of the three. Could
probably be a psychotic who's a psychopath. You could be
a neurotic who's a psychopath, or you could be a
pervert who's a psychopath. Like I think that they're kind
of like different things orientations towards empathy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Yeah, it would be in a different category, and I'm
sure the DSM has something to say about that too,
But still like the psychoanalytic version of psychotic, that that
category is difficult, and like I say that, the only
people who seem to have taken that head on and
made it like a central principle of their philosophy is

(01:11:32):
to lose. In Gautai with their schizoanalysis, I.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Was curious about that, actually, but that's probably a whole
other can of worms.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
And I also brought up Gregory Bateson who used that
strategy that also bears the name schismagenesis, which is a
little bit of the inspiration behind to lose. In Gattrie's
use of the term, I think they appropriated that term
from psychoanalysis, schizo and psychosis specifically to give it this

(01:12:01):
sort of positive revolutionary spin, because it was kind of
just the other of psychoanalysis, right all, we can treat perverts,
we can treat neurotics, but but we can't treat psychotics.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
There, Yeah, I was, I was thinking about that because
it's kind of interesting from what I know about Delus
and Guitari, they talk about the Schitzo as like, yeah,
having some kind of creative potential, but like for the
on the Lacinian account, it's like, no, this is actually
someone who just like hears delusions and has absolute certainty,
almost dogmatic certainty about what they're doing, which is like
not very creative and like open or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Wait, let's be clear. It's not the Schitzo diagnostically that
has creative potential.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
I know, I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
Okay, yeah, it's it's I don't know. I think it's
that aspect of that sort of not having that anchoring point.
Those that like the Schitzo moves by lines of flight, right,
there's no, it's rise omatic, it's not non centered, right,
So it's it, and they they're specifically like an anti

(01:13:07):
Oedipus is specifically positioned like against Lucanian psychic.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
I know that too. Yeah, I know that too, And
I know that they're like.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
There's a direct theoretical connection there. Yeah yeah, but next
next time, we got to look at traversing the fantasy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
I also think that I also think it'd be really
fun and more relatable to more people to talk about
the two types of neurotics, the obsessional and the and
the and the hysteric.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, that should be good too.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
The obsessional can have symptoms the same symptoms as the psychotic,
but you have to you have to parse them careful.
I mean, depending on the symptom. Anyone can have the
symptoms of a psychotic. That's not the right way totally.
So anyway, like to to just I can I can

(01:13:56):
feel the conversation wrapping up. The other is telling me
the lull. The lull has begun, so we should wrap
it up. But we don't know. We can't. There's a
big thing you shouldn't diagnose. You can't diagnose from afar.
But I think our joined answer here is that no

(01:14:18):
chat GPT can't cause psychosis in the Latanian sense, definitely not,
though it could be it could reveal it to exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and uh yeah. I guess to figure out if you
can be a psychotic all along and then only discover
it having had no one diagnose you or tell you,

(01:14:42):
tell you anything unseemly or different about your behavior until
you're thirty eight. Maybe we have to ask somebody about that,
because that seems.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Yeah, I would, I would be interested in following following
up on that, because I'll bet you there's more in it,
And like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
If we as as we I think I mentioned this
to you already that even in the in the DSM
version of schizophrenia, right late onset schizophrenia can happen after
you're forty, and I think that accounted for about twenty
percent of cases would be late on set schizophrenia. So
you go your whole life and then the symptoms manifest

(01:15:18):
in your forties because something triggers it some you encounter
some stressor which triggers this predisposition towards it. You have,
but the predisposition has to be there. And I think
we're saying sort of the same thing about the Lacanian
version of the psychotic, which means yet CHATGYBD can't turn

(01:15:38):
you into a psychotic. You something would already have to
have gone developmentally wrong in childhood and it would just
bring it out of you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
It can create a delusion.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
So just because you have a late onset schizophrenia, according
to the DSM, doesn't mean you're a psychotic in the Lacania.
You could be a neurotic with schizophrenia in the in
the Lacanian structure. There is mentioned in this something that
I wish I could have checked out, which would be
really interesting. Is a visual artist who made a video

(01:16:14):
called Losing the Thread and she's a psychotic and describes
the experience of it. Describes losing herself. She says herself
feels like a balloon floating away and she realizes that
it's going away, but can't can't get it back and
can't get like the She describes it as the driver.
She can't get the driver back in the seat during

(01:16:35):
a psychotic episode. Mm, when she says everything disintegrates, including
my own body. She says, detailing how difficult it becomes
to move from one point another, one point to another
without the CEO in the office.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
Hmm, Yeah, I mean I think there is something to that.
There's creativity is closely related to mental illness. I don't
think it's just a I don't think it's just a
colloquial or kind of folk wisdom thing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
I think it has to. I think it has to.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
Yeah, yeah, all.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Right, well stay tuned for we we have to finish
Object of Desire, and we have to.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Maybe look at the neurotics sub subtypes. You know, we've
been doing a few episodes already on this, so if
you're interested, you should subscribe to our patreon, but we're
probably going to continue a little bit on the lac
on train.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
Yeah, and I think traversing the fantasy is the next
part of the object desire.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
With that, I feel the I feel the other declaring
this episode complete, lock it, thanks for listening, bag.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
It, tag it, bag it, lock and load.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Take care, guys, stay away from triggers, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
And my cat is me owing at me to finish.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
This podcast dinner time.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
I don't know if that's been picked up on the MIC,
but there's been lots of me owing here.