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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Gilles Deleuze contra psychoanalysis #2 « Previous | |Next »
October 12, 2005

In Dialogues Gilles Dellueze makes a second criticism of psychoanalysis. This concerns the way in which psychoanalysis prevents the formation of utterances.The concept of assemblages is introduced:

Assemblages --in their content---are populated by becomings and intensities, by intensive circulation, by various multipliciities (packs, masses, species, races, popualtions , tribes...).... The collective machine assemlage is a material production of desire as well an expressive chain of expression whose contensts are reltaively the least formalized. Not representing a subject --for there is no subject of enunciation--but programming an asemblage. Not overcoding utterances but, on the contrary, preventing them from toppling under the tryanny of supposedly significant combinations. (p.79)

Understanding concepts in Delueze's philosophy (eg., faciality, virtuality, haecceity, types of becoming, and rhizome) is important as they provide to entry points into some of the issues under examination.

Assemblage is an important concept and it seems to describe multiplicities. Presumably we can have different kinds of assemblages or multiplicities, and we can have assemlages of bodies and matter and assemblages of enunciation or utterance. One conception of an assemblage is an arborescense, which is the model of the tree; which sprouts from a single seed, producing a trunk and continuously branching out, growing and spreading vertically. This kind of assemblage is representative of humanist thought and the belief that humans—through language, science, and art—can represent or reflect the world.

This assemblage is juxtaposed with an assemblage as the rhizome, or rootlike organism that spreads and grows horizontally (generally underground), such as couchgrass. Couchgrass or crabgrass continues to grow even if you pull up what you think is all of it, as it has no center, and just spreads continuously in a constant state of becoming..

Deleuze then says of Freud:

And again, there is what Freud does with little Hans: he takes no account of the assemblage (building-street-nextdoor-warehouse-omnibus-horse-a-horse-falls-a-horse-is-whipped!); he takes no account of the situation (the child has been forbidden to go into the street, etc); he takes no account of little Hans's endeavour (horse-becoming, because every other way has been blocked up; the childhood bloc; the bloc of Hans's animal-becoming , the infinite marker of a becoming , the line of flight or the movement of deterritorization). The only important thing for Freud is that the horse be the father--and that's the end of it.

The result?

All the real-desire has already disappearded: a code is put in its place, a symbolic overcoding of utterances, a fictitious subject of enunciation who doesn't give patients a chance.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:50 PM | | Comments (0)
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