Abstract

This discussion charts the oscillation of the human subject between the borders of mysticism and psychosis that are constitutive of the perverse social relation. In the work of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, this perverse social relation codifies the symbolic universe of social reality through a law of the limit, of jouissance. To this end the discussion will show how Lacan's discussion of the Lady from the medieval traditions of courtly love opens up new critical paths towards understanding the subject constituted by the symbolic universe when it is sustained by perversion. By examining the triad of the Lady, the subject, and the figure of perverse paternal authority, the anal Freudian Father or jouisseur, it will be shown how the risk of psychosis is central to the increasingly mystical relation of the subject to their own jouissance which is plagued by its endless sacrifice and resuscitation by the jouisseur. Herein mysticism will be tested as the unique way that the subject circumvents psychosis while they are rendered as a subject by the symbolic universe of the jouisseur