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From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis Chaos and Complexity in Therapeutic Practice Scott William Gremmels

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From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis Chaos and Complexity in Therapeutic Practice Scott William Gremmels From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis Chaos and Complexity in Therapeutic Practice Scott William Gremmels PhD Thesis London School of Economics University of London UMI Number: U615615 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615615 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 T h-£s £ S F 'S m lO ISS^ Abstract From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis Chaos and Complexity in Therapeutic Practice Scott William Gremmels Human life is engaged in a continual process of mapping and modeling the external uni­ verse. From the immediate level of sensation to more abstract forms of emotional and cognitive mapping, the human organism builds a web of inner experience which forms the basis for the construction/perception of “reality.” This act of learning forms the genet­ ic, neural, linguistic, and social programing by which individual and collective subjectivi­ ty is constructed. Theories in philosophy and science are simply more abstract higher- level models of reality akin to our neuro-semantic mappings. They are similiar to cultur­ al, artistic, and religious stories in that their modeling includes not only process but the organized gestalt of content which endows the model with meaning in inner experience. If we move to a higher level of modeling by metamodeling we can understand how vari­ ous theories of human life have mapped reality. The transversal linking of various theo­ ries or models allows us to create clearer maps about process and to transcend the differ­ ences resulting from content which supply meaning to inner subjectivity and which orga­ nize theories, disciplines, and practices like religious belief systems. Schizoanalytic metamodeling engages this transversal process of communication by which two or more different perspectives of the real - two or more subjectivities or realities - are transcended by moving to the next higher logical level in a nested hierachy of organization. Schizoanalysis was one of the names Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze gave to their life­ long project of reinventing psychoanalysis and therapeutic practice and extending it into the material and social field. By giving a name to this practice and outlining its essence they began to gather together the work of various clinicians, artists, philosophers, and sci­ entists who - though isolated - were already engaged in such a project of transforming human experience and whose history has just begun to be told. The present work contin­ ues the development of schizoanalysis as a clinical and cultural practice. Contents From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis Chaos and Complexity in Therapeutic Practice Scott William Gremmels I. The Construction of Subjectivity - Psychobiology 4 1. The Human Being and Becoming - A Conscious Organism 5 2. The Matter of the Mind - Transversal Mapping 23 3. Chaos and Complexity - Beyond the Brain 39 4. Desire at the Limits of Thought - The Sacred 53 5. Psychoanalysis - A Spiritual Science . 60 6. Jouissance - Desire in Knowledge 67 II. Mapping the Psyche - Psychoanalysis 73 1. The Unconscious and the Conscious - Sigmund Freud 74 2. The Schizoid and the Depressive - Melanie Klein 78 3. Containment and Mysticism - Wilfred Bion 81 4. Symmetry and Unfolding - Ignacio Matte-Bianco 85 5. The Aesthetic Object - Donald Meltzer 90 6. Transitional Phenomena - Donald Winnicott 95 7. The Emotion Processing Mind - Robert Langs 99 8. Psycho-Semiotics - Alfred Silver 105 9. The Subject of Analysis - Jacques Lacan 111 10. The Game of the Other - Francois Roustang 115 11. Primary Seduction - Jean Laplanche 121 12. Translation and Poetics - Nicolas Abraham 127 13. Signs of Affect - Julia Kristeva 132 14. Schizoanalysis and Chaosmosis - Felix Guattari 138 III. Mapping the Socius - Ethnopsychology 149 1. Sacrifice and Magic - Shamanism 150 2. Beyond Enlightenment - Pantheism 157 3. From Tragedy to Dialogue - Paganism 161 4. The Sacrifice of the Sacrifice - Monotheism 166 5. From Knowledge to Madness - Nihilism 173 6. Enjoying Your Symptom - Chaotism 184 IV. Clinical and Cultural Practice - Schizoanalysis 193 1. Life and Death - Chaosophy 194 2. Ecosophy and Sovereignty - General Economy 196 3. New Maps of the Psyche - Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Science 198 4. Thinking and Feeling - Abstract Expressionism 200 5. The Social Psyche - Subject, Object, and Other 202 6. Wild Analysis - The Clinic of Everyday Life 205 References 210 Book I The Construction of Subjectivity Psychobiology 4 1. The Human Being and Becoming - A Conscious Organism Human life is engaged in a continual process of mapping and modeling the external uni­ verse. From the immediate level of sensation to more abstract forms of emotional and cognitive mapping, the human organism builds a web of inner experience which forms the basis for the construction/perception of “reality.” This act of learning forms the genet­ ic, neural, linguistic, and social programing by which individual and collective subjectivi­ ty is constructed. The objective perception of the real which is not fully accessible to human subjective perception is something which we can strive for, but we are never finally free of the limitations of the subjective position from which any one of us experi­ ences this real as our “reality”. Further, this reality - or subjectivity or inner experience - forms a world of its own which - while it may be unconscious - is not only a part of the real but perhaps is more determinant in our lives than the conscious or objective experi­ ence of the real. Theories in philosophy and science are simply more abstract higher-level models of reali­ ty akin to our neuro-semantic mappings. They are similiar to cultural, artistic, and reli­ gious stories in that their modeling includes not only objective process but the organized gestalt of subjective content which endows the model with meaning in inner experience. If we move to a higher level of modeling by metamodeling we can understand how vari­ ous theories of human life have mapped reality. The transversal linking of various theo­ ries or models allows us to create clearer maps about process and to transcend the differ­ ences resulting from content which supply meaning to inner subjectivity and which orga­ nize theories, disciplines, and practices like religious belief systems. At the same time however we must not seek to ignore meaning in subjectivity, but to explore it in all its irreducible multiplicity as the essential end of all human existence. Practical means of survival as well as communication across disparate forms of individual and collective subjectivity depend on the ability to transcend subjective inner experience and to per­ ceive from the point of view of the other in the act of finding a common transversal map between maps. Schizoanalytic metamodeling engages this transversal process of commu­ nication by which two or more different perspectives of the real - two or more subjectivi­ ties or realities - are transcended by moving to the next higher logical level in a nested hierachy of organization. Schizoanalysis was one of the names Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze (1972, 1980) gave to their life-long project of reinventing psychoanalysis and therapeutic practice and extending it into the material and social field. By giving a name to this practice and out­ lining its essence they began to gather together the work of various analysts, artists, philosophers, and scientists who - though isolated - were already engaged in such a pro­ ject of transforming human experience and whose history has hardly begun to be told. A line stretches from Nietzsche to Deleuze and Guattari which sidesteps a century of impoverished work in the field of psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and related disciplines. Nietzsche was already a master clinician/physician of the bio-psy­ cho-social whom Freud stated had known more about himself than any single human being, and yet whom he admitted he could not read. The work of Deleuze and Guattari provides an answer to Nietzsche’s vision of the therapeutic enfolded into everyday prac­ tice. The conclusion of their last book What Is Philosophy - “From Chaos to the Brain” - offers a model of the human biopsychic organism as a nexus continually organizing ener- gy-matter into somatic-emotional-cognitive events which could be called “sovereign states”. Perhaps the only weakness in their approach is the over-reliance on the brain as opposed to the complex embodiment of subjectivity which involves multiple psychobio- logical flows of the body encluding endocrine, immune, meridian, and other energetic- information systems. Considering the human organism caught in this flux, the idea of ego or consciousness must be seen as relative, and work in psychoanalysis, hypnosis, psychopharmacology, and phenomenology has only sketched out how transference and trance are ubiquitous in everyday life and unresolvable. Existing models of therapy are antiquated. Schizoanalytic practices of speculative and concrete cartography borrow from all of these models - but also from art and literature - in developing ways to seize hold of and communicate with expressive moments and sovereign states of existence. The complexity of schizoanalytic metamodeling allows it to grasp the volatile and chaotic nature of human subjectivity where simplistic models which seek to define it fall short. It differs profoundly from cur­ rent theories and practices of the psyche in several ways: 1. Schizoanalysis develops its modeling of the human psyche on those who worked inti­ mately with “psychotic” or “schizophrenic” experience such as Reich, Laing, Lacan, and Guattari - who saw in the painful condition of these people the truth of their experience.
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