Larval Subjects .

December 4, 2008

Deleuze and Guattari avec Lacan

Posted by larvalsubjects under Deleuze, Desire, Drive, Guattari, Imaginary, Lacan, Schizoanalysis,
Sexuation, Symbolic
[7] Comments

In what sense can Guattaris thought be understood as a radicalization of Lacanian psychoanalysis?

And what does it mean to say that Guattaris thought is a radicalization of Lacanian psychoanalysis?
First, to characterize Guattaris relationship to Lacan as a radicalization of Lacanian thought is not to
claim that Guattari was an orthodox Lacanian. Rather, Guattaris schizoanalysis is a radicalization of
psychoanalysis in the sense that Hegel is a radicalization of Kant or Spinoza is a radicalization of
Descartes. Just as Hegel and Spinoza deeply transform the thought and projects of their most
important predecessors, Guattari significantly transforms Lacanian thought. However, before such a
question can even be posed it is first necessary to determine just where Deleuze and Guattari share
common ground with Lacan.
While it is certainly true that Guattari transforms Lacans thought in radical ways, it is also true that
this relationship between the two has been presented as being one that is deeply antagonistic and
hostile. Nietzsche pointed out that we arrive at the perspective of substance ontology, that there are
substantial things composed of predicates, due to a set of illusions produced through language where

words create the belief that there are unchanging things corresponding to these words. In the
secondary literature on Deleuze and Guattari, one gets the sense that something similar occurs with
reference to psychoanalysis. Often psychoanalysis is treated as if it is a monolithic entity, as the archenemy, characterized by homogeneity, despite the fact that psychoanalysis is characterized by a
heterogeneous diversity of different schools and orientations often at odds with one another.
This is extremely odd for two reasons: First, it is odd that followers of the champions of difference
would require identity in their enemy. It is as if somehow the ontological claim of the ontological
primacy of multiplicities gets entirely forgotten and the target gets reduced to a molar and simplified
identity without heterogeneous vectors and tendencies of its own. Second, it is especially odd that
American Deleuzians seem so intent on toppling psychoanalysis, as if it were the most pressing
political struggle within the American situation. Psychoanalysis is hardly anywhere to be found in
the United States at the level of practice or predominant theory. Indeed, what we instead get in the
States is the complete exorcism of the subject from the clinical setting, treating diagnostic categories
as if they were natural kinds and signs, the ignorance of anything like a symptom, and a therapy that
tends to be premised on the normalization of its patients so that they might tolerate normal, married,
heterosexual conjugal relations, go to work and produce, and be good little consumers. One would
think that were Deleuzians looking for a worthy project along the lines of Anti-Oedipus, they would
begin not with psychoanalysis which at least provides the possibility of providing a space where all
that resists the normal might at least be enunciated, where the treatment isnt 8 meetings with a
cognitive-behavioral psychologist with tried and trusted methods to get rid of the symptom, where
the solution isnt a chemical straight-jacket but rather with a Foucault and Bourdieu style analysis of
the evolution of the DSM-IV, the relationship between therapeutic practice and insurance companies,
the relationship between therapeutic practice and the legal system and work, an analysis of the
statistical methods through which certain diagnostic categories are produced and generalized, and an
analysis of the discourses through which certain attitudes towards life, the body, and mental health
are produced. This sort of critique would potentially reveal something about American life in general,
something un-thought and at the level of the unconscious in the structural or systematic sense, and
would have potential for generating more active struggles, transforming what appear to be individual
problems into collective symptoms. But alas, apparently psychoanalysis is the arch-enemy.
Read on
As is always the case, its necessary to know a bit about history and the discourses one is talking
about to properly evaluate the relationship between Guattari and Lacan. Guattaris intellectual
trajectory began, and continued his entire life, with the La Borde clinic which was closely affiliated
with Lacan and Lacanian teaching. As Jean-Claude Polack described this atmosphere, When I first
arrived at La Borde one didnt have the right to speak if one had not gone over Lacan with a fine
tooth comb (Gary Genosko, Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction, 2). Yet Guattaris relationship to
Lacan was not simply a tangental one premised on arriving in an intellectual milieu heavily
influenced by Lacan. No, Guattari himself did an analysis with Lacan as well as a training analysis
with Lacan. Moreover, Guattari remained an active member of the Ecole freudienne de Paris [EFP],
Lacans school, for his entire life. Finally, an examination of every reference to Lacan in Anti-Oedipus
reveals, surprisingly, that they are uniformly positive. Indeed, throughout Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and
Guattari make scattered positive references to Seminars 16 and 17, drawing on them to develop their
own concepts. By contrast, it is Lacans students that are invariably the target of their criticisms when

the issue is one of criticizing Lacanian psychoanalysis (the target of their critique of psychoanalysis
lies elsewhere, I believe, than Lacan, though Lacan does become an occasional target on certain
theoretical points in A Thousand Plateaus and various independent essays).
One would expect that were there a complete rift between schizoanalysis and Lacanian
psychoanalysis, Guattari would have severed all relations to the EFP as he began to develop his own
radical schizoanalysis. Yet this did not occur. This suggests that while Deleuze and Guattari certainly
develop a critique of psychoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus, the relationship between Guattari and Lacan is
far more complex and subtle than it is often portrayed.

There are certain features of Deleuze and Guattaris critique of psychoanalysis that simply cannot be
understood outside of the context of debates among the various psychoanalytic schools. Lacan was
excommunicated from the International Psychoanalytic Association (IFP) in 1964. This was two
years after Guattari began his training analysis with Lacan in 1962. The ostensible reason for Lacans
excommunication was his practice of variable length sessions, however it is clear that a tension had
been building between the orthodox psychoanalysis of the IPA, and a number of Lacans own
teachings.
The standard IPA position, descended from Freuds daughter Anna Freud, was that of egopsychology. Here the idea was that the aim of psychoanalysis was the production of a healthy ego,
capable of the management of the management of libidinal and aggressive impulses, and the
adaptation of this ego to reality. Lacan had attacked this psychoanalytic trend on two fronts: First, as
Lacan demonstrated with his account of the mirror stage and a close reading of Freuds own texts
(specifically Narcissism: An Introduction, Mourning and Melancholia, Group Psychology and the
Analysis of the Ego, and The Ego and the Id), the ego is not a rational site or seat of mind that can preside
over unconscious drives, but is rather the product of a specular identification with an image that both
generates aggressivity of its own (Lacans famous imaginary dimension), and is an alienation of the
lived body. Far from being a seat of rationality, claimed Lacan, the more we strive to embody the ego
or the specular image the more alienated we become in this image. Lacan, in effect, undermined the

supposed unity or self-identity of the ego upon which ego-psychology was premised. This, it should
be noted, was a key influence in Guattaris own critique of the subject or identity that will become so
important later in Anti-Oedipus.
Second, Lacan rejected ego-psychologys notion of adaptation to reality on two grounds. On the
one hand, the ego or specular imago produced through the mirror stage renders us fundamentally
maladaptive. Lacan would later extend this critique, showing how language fundamentally
transforms our relation to the world. On the other hand, Lacan critiqued the aims of ego-psychology
or orthodox psychoanalysis on ethical grounds. Under the model of ego-psychology, the analyst set
himself up as a model of both what a person should be morally and as an arbiter of what constitutes
reality. Consequently, analysis practiced with the aim of producing a strong and healthy ego welladapted to reality cannot help but aim at identification with the analyst as a model of what a person
should be and, since reality is both social reality and physical reality, normalization of the analysand or
patient. In other words, the practitioner of ego-psychology, according to Lacan, was not an advocate
of the analysands desire, but rather an agent of the police or the social order. However matters are
worse. For if, as Freud argued and Lacan argues as well, the primary source of our suffering is social
in nature, resulting from the sacrifice of jouissance we must undergo to enter the social order, then it
follows that the normalizing ego-psychologist is intensifying the analysands alienation by teaching
adaptation to the social order. I would argue that it is this form of psychoanalysis that is the primary
object of critique in Anti-Oedipus.
I would argue that there are at least eight Lacanian claims or concepts that were indispensable to
Guattaris own radicalization of psychoanalysis and the formation of schizoanalysis.
1) The critique of the unified ego or subject.
One of the main themes throughout Anti-Oedipus is the critique of the molar and paranoid pole of
desire. One primary form this takes is the idea of a unified self or subject. Clearly, one of the motives
for this critique is the aggressivity that accompanies unified identity or the unified self. It seems that
the more we strive to maintain ourselves, the more aggressive towards otherness we become. On the
one hand, this is because of the manner in which this unity obstructs the pulsation of the drives. On
the other hand, this is due to the nature of specular identification which turns to rivalry with the
semblable or alter. This critique comes directly out of Lacans account of the Imaginary and the mirror
stage. Indeed, Lacan had described the ego and its striving for unified identity as a paranoid structure.
He would make this claim of the domain of the imaginary or the striving for wholeness and
consistency as well.
2) The critique of the idea of totality or wholes.
Another central theme of Anti-Oedipus is the critique of all wholes or totalities as both paranoid and
molar structures. From one end of his work to the other, Lacan is perpetually demonstrating the ruin
of any and all totalities and how the pursuit of totality generates antagonism and fascist tendencies.
3) The critique of Oedipus.

It is assumed that if one falls under the label psychoanalysis, one must be an advocate of the
Oedipus. Throughout his work, Lacan not only complicates the Oedipus through his forays into
ethnography and the focus of his work on psychosis rather than neurosis but also critiques the
Oedipus. In many respects it could be said that for Lacan, unlike Freud, the Oedipus is not central to
Lacans theoretical edifice at all. More importantly, in one respect the ultimate aim of analysis is to
move beyond the neurotics fantasy of the Oedipus. Where Freud constantly defended the father,
Lacan constantly emphasizes the failure of the father and the manner in which the father functions as
a veil in neurosis for something else. Where Freud constantly defended the father as the ground of
social order, Lacan perpetually showed the deadlocks this particular formation created in the social
sphere. In Deleuze-speak, Lacan buggered Freud in his return to Freud. In his final stage, beginning
around seminar 19 (1971 72), began the year before Anti-Oedipus (1972), Lacan begins to move
towards a fully post-Freudian position, developing the borromean clinic that will eventually
culminate in the sinthome where the name-of-the-father is no longer necessary to the knotting of the
three orders and where all subjectivity is premised on universal foreclosure.
4) The critique of unified drives.
The ego-psychologists or orthodox psychoanalysts had argued that there are stages through which
the drives develop and that a healthy subject is one in which the drives become unified around a
single object. Thus, for example, part of neurosis for the orthodox psychoanalyst would consist in the
subject becoming fixated at one stage. For example, the subject might become fixated on the anal
drive. A healthy subject, by contrast, would be a subject in which all the drives were unified. For the
male subject this would culminate in the phallus, while for the female subject this would culminate in
the acceptance of vaginal intercourse. Lacan demonstrated that the drives are in and of themselves
partial, without forming a global and integrated totality. They each go in their own directions, as it
were. This conception of the drives would be crucial for Guattaris understanding of desiringmachines and their endless process of synthesis and lack of unity.
5) Mobile desire and productive desire.
Deleuze and Guattari are famous for arguing that desire is mobile and productive, that it doesnt want
anything, that it represents nothing, and that the unconscious is a factory. This concept of desire is
already central to the Lacanian concept of desire. First, Lacan characterizes desire as an endless
metonymy or displacement that desires to desire or to keep desiring, without any object
functioning as the ultimate object of that desire. Second, in his account of fantasy as well as metaphor,
Lacan emphasizes the productivity or creative nature of desire. Finally, third, Lacan shows how the
unconscious is not a theatre, but a series of endless signifying substitutions producing effects of sense
or meaning and even objects themselves (cf. Seminar 5: The Formations of the Unconscious). Deleuze
and Guattari will radicalize this thesis, extending the field of desire well beyond language, while still
remaining deeply indebted to this Lacanian principle.
6) The social unconscious.
Perhaps one of Lacans most significant contributions is the idea of the social or cultural nature of the
unconscious. Insofar as the unconscious is a product of our introduction into language, it is not a
private or personal sphere like a sack in the mind, but is social and cultural through and through.
Indeed, he goes so far as to argue that the effects of some unconscious processes can only be seen in

the case of the third generation as in the case of psychosis where the foreclosure of the name-of-thefathers effects arent encountered until the third generation. The Seminar on the Purloined Letter
would be another example of the social unconscious, insofar as the various positions of the people in
the story are interrelated through social structure, not private experiences of the mind. Guattari
significantly deepens and radicalizes this idea in his work at La Borde, developing a far broader
account of transference and the unconscious that ranges across everything from the architecture of
clinics, the roles of patients and staff, activities, etc. However, its notable that Lacans understanding
of the unconscious as social in nature already extends it far beyond the domain of the private family
that makes up the object of critique in the second chapter of Anti-Oedipus.
7) The symbolic or semiotic nature of the unconscious.
The tendency among orthodox psychoanalysis was to biologize and personalize the unconscious.
Lacans great contribution was to discern the role of language or the signifier in the unconscious.
Guattari rightly radicalizes this notion of the unconscious, developing a far more complex and
elaborate account of the semiotic.
8) Sexuation
In A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Deleuze and Guattari constantly emphasize the necessity of passing
through the stage of becoming-woman. A lot of ink has been spilled over this and theres been a
great deal of difficulty understanding just what they might be claiming. This claim cannot be
understood outside Lacans account of sexuation in Seminar 20: Encore (1972). There it will be noted
that the masculine side of the graph of sexuation is a highly formalized version of the Oedipus, in
addition to being the side that aims at totalization and identity in the social field. The feminine side of
the graph of sexuation, by contrast, is premised on the logic of the not-all and the absence of
anything like totality. Where the masculine side is the logic of the transcendent, the feminine side is
the side of the immanent.
The common critique of Lacan one hears from Deleuzians is that Lacan focuses too much on lack and
castration. It seems to me that this is a confusion of levels of analysis. If Lacan talks of lack and
castration then this is because neurotics perpetually talk about lack and castration. But the aim of
analysis in the final instance is to move beyond this. This is impossible to do in the absence of
conceptual tools that articulate just how these structures of subjectivity emerge and how we come to
experience ourselves as lacking in a universe where there is no lack. It seems to me that Deleuzians are
mistaken in treating Lacanian thought as the enemy.

About these ads

7 Responses to Deleuze and Guattari avec Lacan

1. Reid Says:
December 4, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I dont have time for a detailed response right now, but I just wanted to say this is a great post,
and that I am in fundamental agreement with your reading of D&G and schizoanalysis. Ive been
attempting a preliminary formalization (in Badious sense) of schizoanalysis over at my blog
(mostly in posts yet to be published), drawing on the kind of reading you propose here.
I also wanted to say that Ive long suspected that becoming-woman couldnt be understood
properly without reference to the graph of sexuation, so Im glad to hear you echo this sentiment.
One question: Im not as well versed in the late Lacan, I dont yet have the French, but what
exactly is a borromean clinic?
2. Schizoanalysis Avec Psychoanalysis Soft Subversions Says:
December 4, 2008 at 8:49 pm
[] 4, 2008 A very good blog, Larval Subjects, writing on the urgent topic of the relationship
between psychoanalysis and []
3. Notes on the Borromean Clinic Larval Subjects . Says:
December 4, 2008 at 11:14 pm
[] Symbolic, Symptom, Transference, Unconscious, Writing In response to my post Deleuze
and Guattari avec Lacan, Reid asks What is the Borromean Clinic? I confess that I am working
through []
4. Schizoanalysis avec Psychoanalysis Larval Subjects . Says:

December 4, 2008 at 11:25 pm

[] Schizoanalysis Ecosophy over at Soft Subversions has written a very interesting riff on my
post about the relationship between Guattari and Lacan: In his personal diary (published in The
[]
5. Sophisto Says:
August 6, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I cant help but say YES to the posted article. Everything seems to me very accurate and
appropriately. If I was forced to say anything critically (why should I?) then I would point a
missing relation
It is said that the topics (1) to (8) are alligned to explain the relationship of Guattari and Lacan. Its
not obvious to me, perhaps to anyone else, what is the relationship in topic (8)! It is quoted that
there might be a sort of parallel between the oedipalian desire of male and the transzendent
objectivity in male social interaction. I dont think thats the point. Because Oedipus is never a
critic of the transzendentally formation of society. But all I can do is presuming because Im not
good in Lacanian terms. Does it really make sence to bug Lacan with Guattarian thought because
the main thing happens on this transition. You know, a parallel has no signifier and the two tracks
will never intersect. One has to read Lacan very carefully, I suppose, to explore whether he had
objected transzendental order in ENCORE. Anyone but not me, this is damned hard work.
Nevertheless, Im really glad to see people working on the forecoming,
ME
6. Ernesto Says:
October 11, 2010 at 10:48 pm
When Ive read Deleuze and Guattaris work 24 years ago I wanted desperatly to become a
Deleuzian. But Ive been cautious enough to read all Freuds work and Lacans among others like
Foucaults. My conclusion is that it is not possible to become a Deleuzian while the neurosis is still
there There is not possible deleuzian thought among the neurotics. So no wonder that Lacan
and Freud where partially forgotten and Deleuze and Guattari were mostly misunderstood (o
even more, used like Negri and Hart do). I wonder why the reterritorialization o the return of the
repressed is so strong among us. May be the answer is to start from scratch like this article does,
read all the previous work (Freud -all of it- Lacan, Spinoza, Gombrowitz, Borges, Reich, Nietzsche,
etc.) and then emit a serious opinion and most of all free ourselves of neurotic and retorialized
schizo thoughts
Thanks for your connment
7. Sophisto Says:
October 12, 2010 at 8:47 am

ERNESTO strikes the center of the philosophical problem: theorizing an d interpretation is by no

means independent from the structure of the unconcious. This structure is pre-destining our lives
and thoughts. Of course there is the problem of exaggerating Deleuzian thought by reinforcing the
schizophrenic capacity. But the quest will always be determined by the two poles. The challenge is
not deciding or voting for the one and only philosophy but balancing oneself in the middle, might
it be where ever you are Being is a problem for everyone, might he be neurotic or schizophren.

Blog at WordPress.com. The Connections Theme.