Abstract
What do Lacanians mean when they refer to the notion of elementary phenomena? This idea, crucial to Lacan’s (1993) theorizations of psychosis in Seminar III, refers back to the psychiatric conceptualizations of the late 19th and early 20th century. However, even while citing the influence of others when utilizing the concept, Lacan—characteristically enough— described the concept in his own distinctively psychoanalytic way. The term is particularly important to Lacan in terms of how he thinks about the development of delusions and related psychotic symptoms in relation to the initial onset of psychosis. In this short paper, I aim simply to introduce this concept and spend a little time describing how what appear to be secondary, after- the-fact psychotic symptoms—delusions, in particular—remain importantly elementary for Lacan, despite that they appear to emerge after an initial psychotic break.
Recommended Citation
Hook, D. (2026). What are Elementary Phenomena? An Introduction to a Lacanian Conceptualization. Middle Voices, 3 (2). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/middle_voices/vol3/iss2/2