The subject's relation to language: towards a "phenomena of style" approach in neurosis clinic

The present article questions a paradox specific to the clinical approach: how to reconcile the advantage in identifying structural indicators enabling a diagnostic to be elaborated, while also deriving the consequences of the limits of the structuralist hypothesis in order to aim at the indeterminate? Exploring the link between language, clinical structure and subjective position affords a way of highlight the structuring function of language in so far as it separates the body from its pleasure, thus simultaneously bringing out the subject. However, this link also reveals the antinomy between the universal and the singular, for which the notion of "style" constitutes an issue to be situated at the very core of the constitution of the subject and the social link. In its very prolongation, the notion of "phenomenon of style" emerges on the horizon as a possible specificity of the neurotic subject's relation to language. Indeed, J. Lacan showed us a tension at the origin of style: this both involve an effect of structural determinations, and that of a subjective choice in ethical terms. J. Lacan first explored the question of style in order to elucidate psychosis phenomena, but it also concerns, though not directly, neurosis. Through this approach, we hope to address the enigma that is constitutive of the subject in inventing its own neurosis, while simultaneously considering the traces of the movement that pushes a subject to invent words to express the unspeakable. (C) 2007 Elsevier Masson SAS. Tous droits reserves.