Incandescent Alphabets : Psychosis and the Enigma of Language

by Annie G. Rogers

Psychosis, an invasion of mind and body from without, creates an enigma about what is happening and thrusts the individual into radical isolation. What are the subjective details of such experiences? This book explores psychosis as knowledge cut off from history, truth that cannot be articulated in any other form.

Delusion is a new language made of ‘incandescent alphabets’ that the psychotic adopts from imposed voices. The psychotic uses language in a singular way to found and explain a strange experience that he or she cannot exit. Through the exegesis of language in psychosis based on first person accounts, the book orients readers to an enigmatic Other, pervasive and inescapable, that will come to inhabit every aspect of the psychotic’s being, thought and bodily experience. The book deploys a poetics as a form of inquiry to give a nuanced picture of delusion as a repair of language itself, following Freud and Lacan—in historic and contemporary forms of psychotic art, writing and speech. Drawing on the author’s own experience of psychosis and psychoanalysis, as well as conversations with analyst colleagues, Dr Rogers offers ways to listen to language in delusion, and argues for the promise of a modified psychoanalytic treatment with psychosis.

Genres: Language, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Linguistics

240 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Annie G. Rogers is a writer and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in Ireland, and a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University, she is the author of A Shining Affliction (Penguin Viking, 1995), Charlie's Chasing the Sheep (Lismore Books, 2003), and The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma (Random House, 2006). She has published poetry and short fiction, and currently is writing a novel. She lives a bi-located life in Lismore and in Amherst, in the US.

Reviews

[Margarete Maneker · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the edge of the alphabet where words crumble and all forms of communication between the living are useless. one day we who live at the edge of the alphabet will find our speech.” – Janet Frame

perfect for those interested in art that can be described as “outsider, brut, folk, naïve, intuitive, and visionary,” asemic writing, and lacanian psychoanalysis. rogers’ investigation is holistic, and never disparages or dismisses the patients whose experiences and artworks she examines. her personal experience of psychosis adds valuable insight and gravitas. loved the focus on the Real as “the domain of the body, unknown.” overall a really wonderful and engaging academic work that never sacrificed readability. will be thinking a lot about Lacan’s observation that “the water of language happens to leave something behind as it passes, some detritus which he will play with…”

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book.