The symbol as a sinthome in Aby Warburg

The renowned art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929) was hospitalized in 1921 at the Bellevue sanatorium under the supervision of psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger. Drawing on a series of published letters and fragments about his treatment, I specify certain aspects of the triggering of his psychosis and the subsequent symptomatic arrangement that Warburg achieves through his work on the symbolic ritual of the serpent among American indigenous peoples. Jacques Lacan developed the concept of sinthome in his later seminars (from 1975 onwards), which consists of a fourth ring (besides the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real) that holds the psychic reality of the subject together.