FRANCA NETO, Oswaldo. The exclusion of Melville’s Bartleby and the “inclusion” of the mentally ill into society. Psicol. rev. (Belo Horizonte) []. 2010, 16, 1, pp.125-137. ISSN 1677-1168.

In psychoanalysis, the remainder (object a) is what causes, what puts the subject into action. It does so by forcing the presentation of a fundamental gap in the accepted universal, something that questions the basic references of that universal, therefore requiring its (re)construction. In western capitalist-democratic society, we also find our remainders. They would be the social “outcasts”, a signifier that has become an important element in any discussion with “humanitarian” connotations. In such discussions one often seeks to re-include those remainders by absorbing them into the system network. This way of dealing with remainders takes away all their strength. Being treated as impotence and not as impossibility, remainders are deprived of their true value. Taking Melville’s Bartleby case as reference and considering the mentally ill as one of the remainders of our civilization, this article seeks to question the terms “inclusion” and “exclusion” and some consequences of their use

: remainder; inclusion; singularity; universal; psychiatric reform.

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