Incandescent Alphabets: Psychosis and the Enigma of Language Available from Karnac Books
This book explores psychosis as truth that cannot be articulated in any other form, delusion as a new language comprised of ‘incandescent alphabets’, and a way of listening to patients in a modified psychoanalytic treatment. 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 other than a construction by the psychotic. 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 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—through 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 listen to language in delusion, and argues for the promise of a modified psychoanalytic treatment with psychosis.
Previous Books
Rogers, A. (2006). The Unsayable. New York: Random House.
Rogers, A. (1995). A Shining Affliction. New York: Penguin Viking.
Recent Publications
Rogers, A. (2015). The child’s desire and the analyst’s act: A retrospective case study. In The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. 102 (5), New York: Gilford, 615-648.
Rogers, A. (2014). Chapter 20: Interpretive Poetics. In Key Thinkers in Childhood Studies, Carmel Smith and Sheila Greene, (Eds), University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL.
Rogers, A. (2012). Immrama – A Journey Through Writing, In The Blue Sky Bends Over All, (Ed Paul Clements) Newtownabbey, England: Dargan Press.
Rogers, A. & Rogers, M. (2010). Points of no return: Turning points with family. In A Way Out of Madness: Dealing with Your Family After You’ve Been Diagnosed with a Psychiatric Disorder, Daniel Mackler and Matthew (Eds.), Authorhouse.
Rogers, A. (2009). “Feathered Alphabet,” Commonline, Winter 2009, No. 103, http://commonline.com. Nominated for 2009 Pushcart Prize.
Rogers, A.(2009). A place for Lacan in Critical Psychology: Four memos and a gap. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, Vol 7, 5-15.
Rogers, A. (2009). Origins: Lost Traces. Ploughshares, Vol. 35 (2), Boston: Emerson College, 129-133.
Rogers, A. (2008). Out of the Blue, The Journal, Vol 31 (2), Columbus, OH: Ohio State University English Department, Ingram Publications.
Rogers, A. (2007). Claudel and Rodin: Toward a Lacanian Poetics. In Josselson, R. & Lieblich, A. (Eds.) The Narrative Study of Lives: The Meaning of Others. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Books.
Rogers, A. (2007). The unsayable, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the art of narrative interviewing. In Handbook of Narrative Inquiry Methodologies (Ed.) J. Clanindin. Thousand Oaks: Sage.