Schizoanalysis
Schizoanalysis is a theoretical and practical approach developed by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, introduced in their 1972 book Anti-Oedipus. It studies how desire is produced and how it connects with social, economic, and political arrangements, and was proposed as an alternative to psychoanalysis.[1][2]
Principles
Deleuze and Guattari criticized psychoanalysis for reducing desire to the family drama of the Oedipus complex. Schizoanalysis instead treats desire as "desiring-production", a positive and creative process rather than a response to lack, which runs through natural, social, and psychological life at once. In this view, desire invests the social field directly, not only through family figures.[1]
Schizoanalysis takes its name from schizophrenia, which Deleuze and Guattari saw as a way into how desire works when it escapes social coding. They stated, however, that the clinical schizophrenic is a person in need of help rather than a model to imitate, and that schizophrenia is not a "lifestyle" or political program.[1]
Development
The approach drew on Guattari's clinical work at the La Borde psychiatric clinic, a center of institutional psychotherapy.[3] Deleuze and Guattari developed it further in A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and Guattari continued it in his own later works, including Chaosmosis.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Gilles Deleuze". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 16, 2026.
- ↑ "Capitalisme et schizophrénie 1. L'Anti-Œdipe". Les Éditions de Minuit. Retrieved October 13, 2026.
- ↑ L. d'Abbadie de Nodrest, M. Piette, H. Bardi, and T. Gozé (2026). "Institutional psychotherapy: a conceptual review and clinical toolbox". Frontiers in Psychiatry. Retrieved October 15, 2026.