Anti-Oedipus 2.8: Neurosis and Psychosis
In this section Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari explain the fifth paralogism.
Figure One: Disciplinary Power in the Classroom. Image Link.
Before really diving into Anti-Oedipus, I explored some of Michel Foucault’s renowned works. It’s worth noting that Foucault authored the preface to Anti-Oedipus, making it fitting to familiarize oneself with his writings beforehand. Among the works I perused, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and Discipline and Punish stood out as my favorites. I mention this because Foucault’s examination of sex and power revolved around understanding how bodies are structured in a given society and how various technologies and discourses dictate and control the body. Unlike Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault does not concern himself with why power operates the way that it does, but rather chooses to illustrate its appearance — how power appears.
Why bring this up?
Because Foucault’s works are exactly that of the fifth paralogism: an elucidation of how bodies are organized through social production.
**Citation Note: The citation for this text is at the bottom of the blog post
Chapter 2.8: Neurosis and Psychosis
Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the fifth paralogism in this section hinges on Freud’s proposal:
In 1924 Freud proposed a simple criterion for distinguishing between neurosis and psychosis: in neurosis the ego obeys the requirements of reality and stands ready to repress the drives of the id, whereas in psychosis the ego is under the sway of the id, ready to break with reality. (AO, 122)
Figure Two: Sigmund Freud. Image Link.
In this quote, Deleuze and Guattari discuss Freud’s differentiation between neurosis and psychosis. According to Freud, in neurosis, the ego consistently repressed the id, adhering to the demand of reality, while in psychosis, the ego is ‘under sway of the id, ready to break with reality.’ However, Deleuze and Guattari critique Freud’s oversimplified distinction. They reference a 1924 case study by Capgras and Carette, presented in the same year as Freud’s distinction. In this case of schizophrenia, the patient “manifested a strong hatred for her mother and an incestuous desire for her father, but under conditions of reality loss where the parents were lived as false parents or ‘doubles’” (AO, 122).
- *In this context, ‘doubles’ “refers to a rare delusional misidentification syndrome in which a person experiences the delusion that they have a double or Doppelgänger with the same appearance, but usually with different character traits, that is leading a life of its own.”
Therefore, this case study presented by Deleuze and Guattari isolates how the boundary between neurosis and psychosis is actually blurred. On one hand, the patient had hatred and incestuous desires associated with the Oedipus complex (neurosis) and a the experience of a deleusion misidentification called “doubling” (psychosis). Deleuze and Guattari discuss this case study and state:
… In neurosis the object function of reality is preserved, but on condition that the causal complex be repressed; in psychosis the complex invades consciousness and becomes its object, at the price of a “repression” that now bears on reality itself or the function of the real. (AO, 122–123)
This critique of Freud is essential to demonstrate that Freud’s perspective, which associates madness solely with psychosis — “linked to a loss of reality” — is overly reductive (AO, 123). But their criticism does not stop here. Ultimately, the question for Deleuze and Guattari resides in how the Oedipus complex plays a role in the convergence of neurosis and psychosis.
Figure Three: Neurotic or Psychotic? Image Link.
From the standpoint of Freud and Lacan, Oedipus was found in neurosis. Yet, Deleuze and Guattari find it surprising “if Oedipus were in fact ‘discovered’ in neurosis where it is supposed to be latent, rather than in psychosis where it is held to be patent” (AO, 123). Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari offer an alternative viewpoint: in psychosis, familial may be present, but is something indifferent — the family does not act as a centralized, organizational force. Instead, “the intensive investments of reality bear on something totally different (the social, historical, and cultural fields)” (AO, 123).
As Deleuze and Guattari write: “an Oedipal ‘organization’ is imposed on the psychotic” (AO, 123). Why?
For the sole purpose of assigning the lack of this organization in the psychotic (AO, 123)
For psychoanalysts, there must be some sort of agent organizing the unconscious. However, they designate Oedipus as this organizing agent — doing so beca because they perceive a lack of such an agent in the first place. As a result, “the psychotic reacts with autism and the loss of reality” (AO, 123). Here, we are presented with the crux of Deleuze and Guattari’s argument in the form of a question:
Could it be that the loss of reality is not the effect of the schizophrenic process, but the effect of its forced oedipalization, that is to say, its interruption? (AO, 123)
Within our particular socius, there is a tendency to swiftly attribute the descent into madness to the schizophrenic process. Repeatedly, we encounter remarks like:
- “Who let them out of the looney bin?”
- “He lost his mind!”
- “She’s psycho!”
However, this discourse overlooks the underlying factors that contribute to the particular symptoms that define one as psychotic. It presupposes a perpetual state of psychosis without acknowledging that what we label as psychosis is a product of particular sociohistorical conditions. Deleuze and Guattari do not attribute madness to an ego’s failure to properly repress the id. Instead, they contend that what we call ‘psychotic symptoms’ could originate from the forced oedipalization imposed upon individuals.
[The schizo] is ill because of the oedipalization to which he is made to submit — the most somber organization — and which he can no longer tolerate: he who has gone on a distant journey. (AO, 123)
This all reminds me of a classic story titled The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1892.
Figure Four: The Yellow Wallpaper. Image Link.
From my recollection, the story is revolves around a woman categorized as mentally unwell, confined to a room in her house. Her husband, John, is her physician. While the story concerns patriarchal themes (which we’ll explore further in my upcoming blog posts on Anti-Oedipus), the primary connection to our current discussion is the confinement to a room adorned with yellow wallpaper. As the woman’s mental state declines, she becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper, perceiving images and motion within it. Hence, the fundamental question emerges: did her confinement sociopolitical conditions lead to the development of psychotic symptoms, or was this psychosis some sort of inevitability?
At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari begin to define psychotics as “those who do not tolerate oedipalization” and neurotics as “those who tolerate [oedipalization] and are even content with it and evolve with it?” (AO, 124). In fact, Deleuze and Guattari even play with the idea of whether the tension between these two groups can be resolved:
So, do you believe these two groups are capable of being joined? (AO, 124).
The solution lies in understanding the recording of desire and identifying the agent responsible for this recording: “it is the recording of desire on the increate body without organs, and the familial recording on the socius, that are in opposition throughout the two groups” (AO, 124). While the majority of the examination of the family as an agent of social production is concentrated in the fourth paralogism, it is essential to emphasize that the family remains intertwined with desiring-production. It is crucial not to perceive desiring-production and social production as separate entities:
… The family relentlessly operates on desiring-production. Inscribing itself into the recording process of desire, clutching at everything, the family performs a vast appropriation of the productive forces; it displaces and reorganizes in its own fashion the entirety of the connections and the hiatuses that characterize the machines of desire. (AO, 124)
Everything is attributed to the family in some form or another. The family either rejects or retains elements of desiring-production — “by distinguishing what belongs to the family from what does not” (AO, 125).
… There’s daddy, there’s mommy, there you are, and then there’s your sister. Cut into the flow of milk here, it’s your brother’s turn, don’t take a crap here, cut into the stream of shit over there. Retention is the primary function of the family: it is a matter of learning what elements of desiring-production the family is going to reject, what it is going to retain, what it is going to direct along the dead-end roads leading to its own undifferentiated (the miasma), and what on the contrary it is going to lead down the paths of a contagious and reproduceable differentiation. (AO, 125; emphasis mine)
Though this quote is a bit long, I find it necessary to conceptualize the family as an agent of social production. Thusly, there are two functions of the family presented by Deleuze and Guattari:
Function 1: “Retention is the primary function of the family.” The family rejects or retains the elements of desiring-production (as explained above).
Function 2: “Resonance — here again, either muffled or public, disgraceful or proud — is the family’s second function.” The (familial) triangulation of desire vibrates and resonates according to what it rejects or retains. For the familial triangle to continue its triangulation of desire, it must be able to evolve its appearance over time.
Figure Five: The Family. Image Link.
All of this analysis culminates in a refusal of Freud’s overly reductive categorizations of the unconscious: “it is the possibility of discriminating directly between [neurosis and psychosis] that creates the difficulty” (AO, 125). Oedipus can be found anywhere and everywhere — a phenomenon that Deleuze and Guattari say is “strictly undecidable, and in this sense it is correct to say that Oedipus is strictly good for nothing” (AO, 126). The undecidability of Oedipus proves that Oedipus serves as this broad, overarching structure that attempts to neatly categorize each and every experience under its umbrella.
If you are a hammer, everything will appear to you as a nail — and Oedipus is one nasty hammer.
Deleuze and Guattari write:
Everything can be converted into neurosis, or warped out of shape into psychosis … There are not two groups, there is no difference in nature between neuroses and psychoses. (AO, 126–127)
Regardless of Freud’s attempts to differentiate neurosis from psychosis, he fails to address the undecidability of address. And it does not matter either way: “… For in any case desiring-production is the cause, the ultimate cause of both the psychotic subversions that shatter Oedipus or overwhelm it, and of the neurotic reverberations that constitute it” (AO, 127; emphasis mine).
Now, we must be careful in saying that all psychoanalysis speaks about is Oedipus. Even Deleuze and Guattari recognize that an important point of psychoanalysis “was the evaluation of the role of these actual factors …insofar as they are distinguishable from the familial infantile factors” (AO, 127). Deleuze and Guattari isolate three key points of analysis for which difficulties arise (all of which can be found on pg. 127; emphasis mine):
- “First is the nature of these factors: were they somatic, social, metaphysical?” (Here, there is a question about the nature of influences on the subject — where did this arise?)
- “In the second place, the modality of these factors: did they act in a negative, privative fashion, by mere frustration?” (Here, there is a question about how the subject responds to these influences — how did the subject respond to this?)
- “Finally, their moment, their own time: was it not self-evident that the actual factor arose afterward, and signified “recent,” in opposition to the infantile or the oldest factor that could be sufficiently explained by the familial complex?” (Here, there is a question about the timing of these influences — when did this happen?)
Do all these aspects find their origin in the father or the mother? Or is there a more nuanced dynamic at word? Deleuze and Guattari go so far as to invoke Wilhelm Reich, a significant figure in psychoanalysis whom they credit with approaching the question of desire in connection to social production more closely than Freud. Yet, they content that even Reich, while acknowledging external factors — like the nature, modality, and timing — he still continued to link everything back to the familial framework, adhering to the Oedipal model.
Figure Six: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Image Link.
Now, you might be considering those supposed deviations from Freudian psychoanalysis, exemplified by figures such as Carl Jung. Deleuze and Guattari highlight Jung’s move to present a solution to two apparent paradoxes. Jung is preoccupied with “the concern for curtailing the interminable cure by addressing oneself to the present or actual state of the disorder” (i.e., Jung seeks to address the state of the disorder directly, in the present) while simultaneously has “the concern for going further than Oedipus, even further than the pre-oedipal, for going much further back …” (AO, 128). In attempting to mediate this tension, Jung presents his archetypes “as actual factors that extend in fact beyond the familial images in the transference, as well as being archaic factors infinitely older and from an order of time which is not that of the infantile factors themselves” (AO, 128).
Yet, Jung’s archetypes make no progress because:
… The actual factor ceases to be privative only provided it enjoys the rights of the Ideal, and does not cease to be an afterward except by becoming a beyond, which must be signified anagogically by Oedipus instead of depending on it analytically. (AO, 128)
Hence, Jung attributes “the rights of the Ideal” to a factor, essentially reinforcing the concepts of Oedipus. Jung does not employ Oedipus directly in his analysis; instead, he relies on symbols that idealize a factor and its position in the unconscious.
For the young, whose problems concern the family and love, Freud’s method!
For those less young, whose problems have to do with social adaptation, Adler!
And Jung for the adults and the old people, whose problems have to do with the Ideal. (AO, 128)
Desiring-production does not rely on Freud’s Oedipus or Jung’s archetypes. “On the contrary, it is Oedipus that depends on desiring-production …” (AO, 129).
So … what’s the fifth (and final) paralogism?
Paralogism 5: The assumption that desiring-production arises after Oedipus or presupposes an Oedipal (or pre-Oedipal organization)
- “It is indeed in this sense that the idea of the afterward seemed to us to be a final paralogism in psychoanalytic theory and practice … (AO, 129)
- “Undecidable, virtual, reactive or reactional (reactionnel), such is Oedipus” (AO, 129)
Oedipus has consistently been a reaction rather than the fundamental cause. Asserting its presence from the outset is a characteristic feature of psychoanalytic interpretation. Deleuze and Guattari conclude this section by incorporating a quote from Gisela Pankow, which I deem fitting:
Gisela Pankow asks if it is a matter of reaching the invalid at the point of [the schizophrenic’s] regression, in order to give [the schizophrenic] indirect symbolic satisfactions that would allow [the schizophrenic] to resume a progression, to take up a progressive pace.
It is not at all a question, she says, “of administering care that the schizophrenic presumably did not receive when he was a baby. It is a question of giving the patient tactile and other bodily sensations that lead him to a recognition of the limits of his body. … It is a question of the recognition of an unconscious desire, and not of this desire’s satisfaction.” (AO, 130; emphasis mine)
Figure Seven: Happy Philosophers. Image Link.
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A personal favorite quote from this section —
“Oedipus, the fountainhead where the psychoanalyst washes his hands of the world’s iniquities” (AO, 128; emphasis mine)
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Citation:
- Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. (1972). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
