Great piece, Thomas, I enjoyed reading this! I wonder if this frame could be extended to include analysis of ADHD and Autism. Do you think these could also be products of generational and individual trauma under capitalism and colonialism? I also wonder if there is a link to be made between this work and Gabor Maté on Addiction. It seems addiction is also a situational illness. Last comment is about the role of gender and sexuality in all this - women were labeled as hysterics, sexual misfits as perverts (paraphilia is the technical term), and similarly suffered under the rising tide of psychology as a pseudo-science. I guess I wonder if the focus on schizo is masculinist, or at the very least sets it apart from a whole range of mental hygene illnesses that were created at around the same time. See Jennifer Terry's _An American Obsession_ for a queer's perspective that is FOucault informed and historically grounded (Foucault is know for having taken some liberties with the historical record). Cheers.
Mona Mona, thanks very much for your comments and cross-post. Terry’s book looks invaluable. I’ll order a copy. Maté’s latest book has been high on my list to read since it came out. I listened to a bunch of his talks and interviews and found it all very agreeable to what I’ve been studying. I haven’t gotten to reading him yet, but I know he too will be an important resource.
I think a case could be made that there’s a masculinist or sexist element in Deleuze and Guattari’s focus on schizophrenia (it’s not quite the main focus in Foucault’s book, until later in the text). But for D&G, it’s viewed from the scale of social production. They discuss things like perversion and hysteria, but the analysis of schizophrenia functions as a basis for understanding mental illnesses more broadly under capitalism, for demonstrating desire and repression as inseparable from social production and the material conditions of existence. For D&G, neuroses are fabricated through social and psychic repression, which for them occurs via social production and reproduction, while psychosis and perversion are different forms of escape or interruption from these systems of repression (I’ll go more into these aspects in Part 2, or potentially a Part 3… 😊).
With their social (largely Spinozist) conception of desire, D&G aim to undercut a lot of the more gendered and familial versions of psychoanalysis. For example, “The Women's Liberation movements are correct in saying: We are not castrated, so you get fucked,” or, for example, “The truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on.”
In both Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, the term autism is used in association with schizophrenia, or at least the aspect of the “inability to enter into spontaneous communication with the affective life of others.” I know the definition of autism has evolved in the decades since, but I think there is certainly room for understanding this condition as well as ADHD as products of generational and individual trauma under capitalism and colonialism.
Great piece, Thomas, I enjoyed reading this! I wonder if this frame could be extended to include analysis of ADHD and Autism. Do you think these could also be products of generational and individual trauma under capitalism and colonialism? I also wonder if there is a link to be made between this work and Gabor Maté on Addiction. It seems addiction is also a situational illness. Last comment is about the role of gender and sexuality in all this - women were labeled as hysterics, sexual misfits as perverts (paraphilia is the technical term), and similarly suffered under the rising tide of psychology as a pseudo-science. I guess I wonder if the focus on schizo is masculinist, or at the very least sets it apart from a whole range of mental hygene illnesses that were created at around the same time. See Jennifer Terry's _An American Obsession_ for a queer's perspective that is FOucault informed and historically grounded (Foucault is know for having taken some liberties with the historical record). Cheers.
Mona Mona, thanks very much for your comments and cross-post. Terry’s book looks invaluable. I’ll order a copy. Maté’s latest book has been high on my list to read since it came out. I listened to a bunch of his talks and interviews and found it all very agreeable to what I’ve been studying. I haven’t gotten to reading him yet, but I know he too will be an important resource.
I think a case could be made that there’s a masculinist or sexist element in Deleuze and Guattari’s focus on schizophrenia (it’s not quite the main focus in Foucault’s book, until later in the text). But for D&G, it’s viewed from the scale of social production. They discuss things like perversion and hysteria, but the analysis of schizophrenia functions as a basis for understanding mental illnesses more broadly under capitalism, for demonstrating desire and repression as inseparable from social production and the material conditions of existence. For D&G, neuroses are fabricated through social and psychic repression, which for them occurs via social production and reproduction, while psychosis and perversion are different forms of escape or interruption from these systems of repression (I’ll go more into these aspects in Part 2, or potentially a Part 3… 😊).
With their social (largely Spinozist) conception of desire, D&G aim to undercut a lot of the more gendered and familial versions of psychoanalysis. For example, “The Women's Liberation movements are correct in saying: We are not castrated, so you get fucked,” or, for example, “The truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on.”
In both Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, the term autism is used in association with schizophrenia, or at least the aspect of the “inability to enter into spontaneous communication with the affective life of others.” I know the definition of autism has evolved in the decades since, but I think there is certainly room for understanding this condition as well as ADHD as products of generational and individual trauma under capitalism and colonialism.
Cheers!