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ttari'smostinfluential
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Contents
Sepulchrefor an OedipusComplex
r. Institutional Psychotherapy
Transversality II
in the casesmentionedhere) the resultscan be impressive;when lesswell L'lncorucientmachinique, in his most recentstill unpublished writings and in the
done,disastrous. chapter on 'Capitalist Systems,Structuresand Processes'(as yet unpub-
Fclix Guattari was bv origin a psychoanalystin the Lacan schoolbut was lished in French) in this book. He tells me that his view of theory is that it has
politically'engaged from very earlyon. This engagementbecameincreasingly an essentiallycreative function, like art. The aim of theory is to produce new,
articlrlatedthrough and after the eventsof Mav r968, in which he plal'ed a more heuristictheoreticalobjectsand he quotesthe inventionofpolyphonyin
major behind-the-scenes role. But also through the rg6os he worked at La music. In the left France of rg8z everyonewants to invent new theoretical
Borde psvchiatric clinic south of Paris u'here he elaboratedhis idea of objects.Guattari hassucceededin inventingsome- in fact quite a number of
'institutionai aualvsis' as a methodological critique of institutional
them.
psvchotherapy'which had been the ideologyofthe clinic sinceits inaugura- In this writing, individuals,groupsand'the society'arenot denied,but the
tion, in which Guattari participated,in r953. Sinceits formation in r975 he desiring machines operate in the spacesbetweenthese 'entities'. Guattari's
has been centrally active in the International Network Alternative to writing itselfissuesfrom this sort ofinterspace and is directed back again into
Psychiatrv.He has had somecriticismlevelledat him by somecirclesin the these'spacesbetween', which are the spaceswhere things are agendes.Then,
'alternative' movement becauseof his associationwith La Borde, where
by a curious but comprehensiblelogic, the writing itself becomesagencement.
electroshock(ECT) and insulin coma are stiil practised.He is not a doctor The reader will have to rvork out the meaning of this term lrom the text itself
and has never given thesetreatmentsto anyone,but more importantly his and the Glossary,l but I shall simply note here that one of the ways that
'institutional analysis' has the specific aim of'depassing' politically the
Guattari vsesagencemenl is closeto the way that Ert ing Goffman describesthe
practice of institutional psychotherapy.His concept of transversalityis everydaylife organization of experience,in FrameAnajsis tor example. But if
'transference'(the psychoanalytic
worked out as a critique ofinstitutional one searchesfor analogies between Guattari's position and positions in
concept). What he means by transversalityin the institutional context 'Anglo-Saxon'social
thought,one is hard-pressedto find equivalences ro the
Guattari explains in the chapter of that name in this book. The word, conceptof rule in, say, ethno-methodologyor in P. Winch's Wittgenstein-
horvever,also connotesan intellectualmobility acrossdisciplineboundaries orientated rule-following approach. The closestone can get is in the concep-
and aboveall the establishmentofa continuum through theory,practiceand tion ofa'plane of consistency'that Guattari develops.
militant action. The questionfor Guattari, and the restof us, is how to undo the erstwhile
Our aurhor has also met w,ithcriticism lrom somecirclesof the organized emancipatory rhetoric of much of the seriesof social revolutionary a{hrma-
left in terms ol gauchiste'spontaneism'. In lact there are few people who have tions of the r96osand early r97os.How to re-think what thought might be.
thought out so con.sistently,critically aird self-criticallythe problem of We may havewidely differenrresponses ro this question,bur one thing is sure:
'dangerousmyth'
spontaneousaction, arriving at the conclusionthat it is a from now on, in no conceivablelvay can Fdlix Guattari's extensiveand
that we have to rar.rscendin a multiplicity of new practicesthat he specifies'I intenseresponsebe left out ofaccount.
can alsotestili'to his generosityand to thevery phvsicalrisksthat he has run The selectionof articlesin this book deliberatelyomits a number of pieces,
in his defenceof dissident Italian leftists accused,rvithout proofs being all ofthem interestingbut having many local references directedat a French
brought, of lirrks with terrorism. Today, after the left ascensionto power in public. The English-languagereader may find some difficulty with the
Franceon ro May r98r, F6lix Guattari is involvedrvith publicly important author's terminology, though theseearlier writings by no means present the
questions.srrchas the Free Radio svstem (for which he has waged a long problem of Guattari's later and conjoint work. One might object ro someof
strugglein Europe)as an indicatorofa new st,vlein masscommunicationthat the language and remark that there is a perfectly good philosophical and
constitutesa rationalchallengeto rationaladministrators,u'ho at lastseemto scientificlanguagethat has by no meansbeenexhaustedthrough 2,5ooyears
be genuinelyconcernedwith problemsof democracyat the baseof society. of history,but we should norjump to the conclusionthar Guattari is guilty of
'anti-
Guattari's position is not, as some people have seemedto think, stylisticpen,ersitv.As with Deleuzehis totally explicit aim is to desrructurea
theoretical'but representsa new type oftheoreticalactivity that would avoid consciousness and a rationality over-sureofitselfand thus too easyprey to
the simpiilfing reduction to containing structuressuch as the dyadic and subtle,and not so subtle,dogmatisms.
triadic situations of psychoanalysis(transferencesituation, Oedipal com- The boundariesbetweenthe forms olhuman and non-humanmatter that
plex) or of C. S. Peirce'srelational logic (to which he often refers).The t. Referenceshould be made ro the verl,useful and lucid account ol'agencementgivenh
Dialogue.r:
particular nature of the rigour that Guattari is developingcan be seen in GillesDeleuze,ClairePamet,!-lammarion, r977, pp. 84-9r.
4 Inroductlon
Fdlix
that clear-cut'Ifwe chooseto foliow Sepulchrefor an Oedipus Complexr
we encounterin the world are never is.becausewe
regions of ambiguitv it
Guattari in his nornadisrnthrough that emerges
u'-t t"rnittttttlu rewarding clarity
elimpse from very early on
ihroucl, this highlv orieinal rr'riting'
DAV'D COOPER
Death, my lriend, you know. But what death?The death we talk about, the
comfortofsleep at the last, or the dead end offinality that peopledon't talk
about so muchl
When I was six or seventhere was a long period when I rvokeup every night
with the samenightmare- a Lady in black. Shewas coming towards my bed.
I was terrifi,edof her, and my terror woke me up. I was alraid to go back to
sleep.Then, one evening, my brother lent me his air-gun; he said I must
simply shoot her if she came back. She never came again. But what really
surprisedme, I remember clearly, is that I did not in fact load the (real) gun.
This led o{Iin two directions at once. In the direction of the garden - that is
ol the signified - it was my aunt Emilia, my father's sister, with her black
name and her black clothes, a truly horrible woman; and in the direction of
the courtyard - that is of the signifier - it was the wardrobe with the mirror on
it facing my bed, in my parents' bedroom. But ol coursel The words
themselvesexplained it: l'armoire,la Dameennoir,la Damedemoire,l'arme noire,
I'armoise,lesarmesdu moi, la Mouise.2In the thirties, my father had gone
bankrupt,and, with the assistance olthis aunt, Emilia, he had setout to raise
angora rabbits: betweenthe crash and the slump, rve ended up eating the
rabbits. Papa was on the vergeofsuicide, but ofcourse there were the children
to consider. . .
Death and the mirror. I 'vho was there and who neednot have beenthere. I
am all there. I am all not there. I am all or nothing.
Then there was the dog. It had bitten me or knocked me over on the gravel
outside the big house at Maigremont, my Aunt Germaine's (sister of my
maternal grandmother) . It rvasjust in lront of a large, gloomy ground-floor
room, where there rvas a billiard table and one of those things br trying
clothes on, jackets or dresses, I forget, a headless body, a body that feit
nothing if you stuck a knife into it, on a wooden sland, wirh a wooden ball on
top of it. Later on I linked it up with'corpse', 'body', rvhich I found in an
r. Published in the issueof Clazgeentirled'Diraison, disir'.
z. The wardrobe, the Ladv in black. the Lady in moiri, the black weapon, wormwood, rhe
weaoonsof the self. the Deoression.
Sepulchre lor an Oedipus Complex
6 Sepulchrelor an Oedipus Complex 7
real skv-blue'Still later I made the Silence.Panic. HE mustn't hear. It should be shut; it's all over. He? Who?
Enelish vocabularywith a blue cover,a
Body' Why, my father surely, lying on his death bed. He is waiting for her to join
coJnectionrvith Deleuze'sorganless
unweaned' him. There's a problem with the electric connection- the lampis going to go
Real teeth,not just the humped gums ol the
to"ttthii.tg I must have.picked up without.noticing out; it's all over. In the nick of time I manageto reconnectthe thing.
Vi..ii, lvirrg so,-,ndles',
Death in the garden here' The dog's I'm nine; it is a few months belore the outbreak of war. I am in Normandy,
t o*'uug.r. ,n".-ori., of No'-u'"li
waiting to leap over the edge' A dog in the dark' at my (maternal)grandmother's.We are listeningro rhe 'traitor of Stuttgart',
,..rf-r.e?"g on the balcon)-,
'{ dog uttering' trying to.tell me Jean Hdrold Paquis. My grandfather (grandmother has remarried), a vast
Nom rlu chien,in th. nume of the iather'
s.limy dog coming down.the steps and kindly old man, is sitting on the toilet. The door is open so that he can
something.Dogswith a cogitn'Andthen that
animated words, totems of death hear the radio. N{y cutting-out box is by his feet - little paper dolls I make
ut th..niof tis olildados.'Ammals, -
It swellsup like a frog' It clothesfor. Grandpa's head hangs right down, onto his knees,and his arms
A dove, in anothergardcn (my paternaluncle's)'
eagle l fire' over and. over flop besidehim. Is he touchingmy toys?I want to shoutour to him. Silence.I
i. u,.,.ugl.' Mv father's gan' A huge,^tt*ifyilq
Chaplin getsnowhere trying tcr turn my head, slowly - an eterniry - towards rhe light on the radio. A terrible
again. {i'is like a tlumm2.I"t'sno gooJ' Charlie
head in a gas lamp ) After thinking about this crash. He's fallen onto the floor. Grandmother screams.It's a stroke.Turn off
t.,iiti.,.6un,. (It wedgeshis
enJ I finally realized that the dove and the eaglewere two the radio. Call the neighbours.I'm alonein the dark. Crying, crying.
lr."t" f"t duy, on 'Want
to haveone last look at him?'There's a newspaperover his head, to
bitsofmvoldaddress(ruedel'Aigle,laGarenneColombe)-simpll'
tryng
.,o.r,ilglu. Tt.t. child clinging to home territory evenwhile part of him is
'be keepoflthe flies.There's a newspaperover thejam Grandmother'sj ust made
I if I didn't come from my parents' hguse?.1!e - to keepoffthe flies.
;;;;"";"i'. who wouli
A dead body on top ofthe cupboard where rhe pots ofjam are kept.
deaclbirdfliesaway'Iamme.Adeathinstinctrrnleashed|orgood.Andthis
I gave them a poem to put in his cofhn. 'What rhymes with bonheur?'He had
time the Qnaginary)gun rrlatloaded'
more dog-turdson the gravel lt is answered,'Instead otfeuille moile,you can just put lesfailles semeurent','But
There u,ereno more ambivalentdogs,no
o. the iove - not both in the sameplace' And you can't sav that, Grandpa.' 'You can if I say so!' I would have to ask
all or nothins. It is the .ugl"
A perr"erselUanicheisrn' someoneelse.I loved him a lot, but he might not know somerhinglike that.
then, whateve, hupp.nt,''it is notl.ring'nothing'
open,like the igg on mv (maternal) cousin'splatein He'd beena worker. An amazing man. A striker. They'd gone on strike at
chilclhoodhome broker.r
home set apart' like the ,, N{onceau-les-Mines.There'd been fighting. Some peoplewere killed.
,n. frig lrur.rnent kitchen at MaigremoJChildhood
table in the corner ofanother kitchen' I
oil-clo"th-covered
"
the gardenwith the birds They Contemplatingsuicide.A phobic object. Dying to exorcisedeath. Corpse,
I spentsix months with Uncle Charlesof
- cancer.when I left, thev thought he Body, Flesh convulsed to put an end to finitude. Death in the hollow ofyour
werervaitinglor him to Ji. t.l. liad lung
I never went back to my father's famil;' home hand, a finger on the trigger - to trigger offa lot more chaos,for all the others,
l'rad only a few dal's to live'
too. Putting the lid down. Pulling the chain. Willing impotence.
again
my piano alwaysstood:idea of One bullet into the mouth, another into rhe heart.Just a vear belore his
A great empty spaceagainstthe wall where
- a crossroads' that thing like an island brotherhe blew his brainsout. A shotgun.Po.intblank. I couldn't understand
a vacuole. Outside iit
""t''
opposite the exit of the Friendly Society hall' it. I lought it without understanding. His way of saying fuck everything. I lelt
overhangingthe pavement
there' leaning against the only rage.As if he'd shot me.
Furtl.reralong. a big piano shof' Lucien Sebag.was
I don't know But he had alreadv Naive policemenon bicycles.Blond hair. Outside rhe metro at two a.m.
wail. It w.aseither beforeor after his suicide'
wall' And he certainly stayedthere- but.then' he had Come and see me again when you can pay me, little boy, when you've
;;; ;".t the Oedipal
to know' Inside' there was my established1'ourselfin some way. This wasn't really her scene. Maybe she
iu. *o.. reason than I didl I didn't want
ups.tairs'perhaps- or perhaps he had nothing to do with that kind of scene.
*oth., on the ground floor' NI.vfather was
like my Paternal grandfather. I Aimed at the black, killed the white. Frankly now, do vou really think I'm
had already gone - no ont ftnt* rvhere'Just
hal'e done it' going to be all right? I'm amazed by your naive optimism. I do feel a lot
neverknew trim, but he shouldn't
post-officeThey are ciosing' better,it's true. But that'sjust what worriesme, becauservhateverhappens,
Nlama behincla cashier'swindorv'A country
her accountbooks l beseech' it's too late. I'm too old. I can't start againat the beginning.The hopeyou rry
I get therejust in time' Or too late' She closes
to give me only makes me feel anxiety. Are you reaily taking in what I'm
Sh!sheindicatesrl'ithherheadadooronlrerrightthatopensontodarkness.
I Sepulchrefor an Oedipus Complex
institution ;rs subject thev will ne,,,ersucceedin expressingthemselves alcohoiismamong one lot ofnurses perhaps,or the generallyunintelligent
otherrvisethan ir-iincohelenttermsfrom which onewill still be left to decipher behaviourofanother (for it is quite true, as Lacan pointsout, that stupidity is
the object(totem and raboo)erectedat the very point at which the emergence anotherway of expressingviolent emotion). It is surely a kind olrespectfor
of real speechin rhe group becomesan impossibility.The bringing to light of the m),steryembodiedin neurosesand psychoses that makesthoseattendants
this point, at which desireis reducedto showingonly the tip of a (false)nose, in our moderngra,,eyard degradethemsell'esand thus pay negativehomage
cannotgive accessto clesireitselfsincethat $'ill remain,as such,ttnconscious to the messageof thosewhom the entireorganizationof our societyis geared
as the neurotic intends, relusing completelyto let itself be demolishedby to disregarding.Not everyonecan a{Iord, like some psychiatrists,to take
exhaustiveexplanations.But clearinga space)keepingroom for a first piane refugein the higher reachesofaestheticismand thus indicate that, as lar as
of referencelor this group desireto be identified,will immediatelyplace the theyare concerned,it is not life'smajor questionsrhat they aredealingwith in
whole statementof the problem be,vondchancerelationships,will throw an their hospitalwork.
.
entirely new light on'problems of organization" and to that extent obscure Group analysiswill not makeit its aim to elucidatea statictruth underlying
attemptsat formal anclapparentlyrational description.In other rvords,it is this symptomatology,but rather to create the conditions lavourable to a
t h e t r i a l r u t t f o r a n y a t t e m p ta t g r o u Pa n a l v s i s , particular mode of interpretation, identical, lollowing Schotte's view, to a
In such irn attempt, a lirndamenraldistinctionrvill emergeirom the very transference. Translerenceand inter.pretationrepresenta symbolicmode ol
beginningbetweencuring the alienationof the group 2p6[snzlysingit, The intervention,but u,emust rementberthat they are not somethingdone by an
lunction of u group analysisis not the sameas that of settingup a community individual or group rhat adopts the role of'analvst, lor the purpose.The
with a more oi lesspsycho-sociological orientation,or group-engineering. Let interpretationmav rvellbe given by the idiot of the ward if he is able to make
me repeat: group anal.vsisis both more and less than role-adaptation, his voiceheardat the right time, the time rvhena parricularsignifierbecomes
transmitting inlormarion and so on. The kev questionshave been asked activeat the levelofthe structureas a rvhole,lor instancein organizinga game
beibre iikes and dislikeshave har.dened,beforesub-groupshave formed, at of hop-scotch.One has to meet interpretarionhalf-way.One must therefore
-
the ievel lrom rvhich the group's potential creativity springs though rid oneselfofallpreconceptions - psychological,sociological,pedagogicalor
generallv all creativity is strangled at birth by its complete rejection ol even therapeutic.In as much as the psychiatristor nurse wields a certain
ionr.,.,r.. the group preferring to spend its time mouthing clich6s about its amountofpower, he or she must be consideredresponsiblelor destroyingthe
,rermsof r.eference" and thus closingolrthe possibilityofeversat'inganvthing possibilities ofexpressionofthe institution'sunconscioussubjecti'ity.A fixed
real, that is, anything that could have any connectionwith other strandsof transference, a rigid mechanism,Iike the relationshipof nursesand patients
human discourse,historical,scientific,aestheticor whatever' with the doctor, an obligatory, predetermined,'territorialized,transference
Take the caseof a political group'condemned by history': r+'hatsort of onto a particularrole or stereotype,is worsethan a resistanceto analysis:it is
desirecould it live by orher rhan one forever turning in upon itself?It will a wav of interiorizing bourgeoisrepressionby the repetitive,archaic and
have incessantlvto be producing mechanismsof defence,o{' denial, of artificialre-emergence ol the phenomenaof caste,w,ith all the spellbinding
repr.ession, group phantasies,m1,ths,dogmasand soon. Analvsisof thesecan and reactionarygroup phantasiesthey bring in their train.
only leacito discooeringthat they expressrhe natureofthe group'sdeathwish As a temporarysupport set up to preserve,at leastfor a time, the objectof
in its relation to the buried and emasculatedhistoric instinctsof enslaved our practice,I propose to replacethe ambiguous idea of the institutional
masses)classesor nationalities.It seemsto me lhat this last aspectof the transferencewith a new concept: transaersalitl,t in the group. The idea of
,highestleyel,ofanah,siscannot be separatedfronr the other psychoanalytic transversality is opposedto:
problemsof the group, or indeedof individuals. (a) verticality,as describedin the organogrammeof a pyramidal structure
In rhe traditional psychiatric hospital, for example, there is a dominant (leaders,assistants, etc.);
group consistingofthe director, the financial administrator, the doctors and (b) horizontality,as it existsin the disturbedwards ofa hospital,or) even
Iheir vuives,etc.,who lorm a solid structurethat blocksanVexpressionofthe more,in the senilewards; in other words a stateof afrairsin which thinss and
clesireof the groups of human beingsof which the institution is composed. peoplefit in as bestthel,can with the situationin which they find themselves.
\dhat happeni ro rhar desire?One looksfirst at the symptomsto be seenat the Think of a field with a lence around it in rvhich there are horseswith
levelofvaiious sub-groups,which carry the classicsocialblemishes,beingset adjustableblinkers: the adjustment of their blinkers is the 'coefEcientof
in their ways, disturbance,all forms of divisiveness,but alsoat other signs- transversality'. Ifthey are so adjustedas to makethe horsestotally blind. then
rB Institutional PsYchotheraPY Transversality rg
halllcinate history, and wars and classconflictswill becomethe meansof militantactivit), in a reified social context createsa radical break with the
his/her own sell-expression. sense of passivitythat comeswith participationin the usual institutions.It
All this ma1'be true of madness'vou maY say, but histor.v,the history of maybe that I shali later on come to see that I was myself conributing a
socialgroups,has notl-ringto do with such madness.Here again, I show my certainactivism, an illusion of eilectiveness,a headlong rush forward. Yet I
fundamentalirresponsibility.If only I could content myself rvith itemizing believethat no one who had the experienceof being a militant in one of those
the various areasofphantasy in which I can find securitylBut then I would youthorganizationsor mass movements,in t.heCommunist Party or some
remain condemned to going back and lorth in a dead end, and would have to splintergroup, will ever again be just the same as everyoneelse.Whether
admir that I have merely vielded to the external constraintsthat were part therewas real effectivenesshardly matters; certain kinds of action and
and parcel of each ef the situationsthat made me. Underlying my different concentration representa break with the habitual social processes, and in
options - being-lor-historv, being-for-a-particular-group' being-for-litera- particularwith the modes of communication and expressionof feeling
ture - is there not some searchfor an unthinking answerto what I can only inheritedfrom the lamily.
call being-lor-existence,being-lor-suffering? I have tried to schematize this break, this difference, by distinguishing
The child, the neurotic, everv one of us, starts by being denied any true between the subjectgroup and the objectgroup. This involvesto someextent
possessi,rn of selt fcr the individual can only speak in the context of the reopening the questionof the distinction betweenintellectualsand manual
discoursecf the Other. To continue with the quotation lrom Freud I gave rvorkers, a slight chanceoftaking up the desireofa group, howeverconcealed
earlieron, it may be, a chanceof escapingfrom the immutable determinism whose
modelscome lrom the structufe of the nuclear family, the organization of
a neuroticisobligedto replace
I1'heis leftto himself, bv hisorvnsymptomformations
He createshis own rvorldoi labourin industrialsocieties(in terms of rvagesand of hierarchv),the army,
the sreatgrouplormations {iom ivhichhe is exclr-rded.
and thus t h ec h u r c ha n d t h e u n i v e r s i t l .
imaginationlor himself.hts orr'llreligion,his own svstemof delusions,
recapitulates theinstitutions waywhichis clearevidence
in a distorted
of hr-rmanity of A smallgroup of militants is somethingapart from society;the subversion
q it plansis not usually directed to something in the immediate future, exceptin
theciominating sexualinlpulsions
partplavedbv thcclirectl;'
such exceptional cases as that of Fidel Castro or the Latin American
The establisheddiscourseofthe groupsofyoung peoplethat I belongedto, guerriilas. Its horizon is the boundary ofhistory itself: anything is possible,
the establisheddiscourseof the workers'organizationsI encounteredin the evenif in reality the universeremains opaque.Somethingof the same sort.
filties, the philosophicaldiscourseofthe bourgeoisuniversity,literary dis- existsin institutional pedagogy and institutional psychotherapy, Even in
course,and ail the other discourses, eachhad its own consistency and its own
impossible, dead-endsituations,one tries to tinker with the institutional
axioms, and each demanded that I adapt myself to it in order to trv and make
machinery, to producean eflecton somepart of it; the institutionsacquirea
it m1' own. At the same time, these successiveattempts at mastering kind of plasticity, at least in the way they are representedin the sphere ol
discoursesactualll, lbrmed me by lragmenting me - since that fragmentation intention.
itselfwas, on the plane of the imaginary,simply the first beginningof a more Caslro,at the head of hundreds of thousandsof Cubans, unhesitatingly
proibund reuniting. After reading a novel, I would find a whole new world wentto \{'ar againstwhat he called 'organigrammism', or planning from the
openin{ trp belble me in, say,a vouth hostel,quite anotherin politicalaction cenre. This is something that is a problem throughout all the so-called
and so on. My behaviourIVasthus affectedby a kind of poli morphism with socialistsocieties.A certain concept of the institution, which I should call
more or less perverseimplications. Diflerent social bodies of relerencewere non-subjective, implies that the systemand its modifications exist to servean
expectingme to make a decisionon one level or another. and to become externalend, as part of a teieologicalsystem.There is a programme to fulfil,
establishedin someidentifiablerole - but identifiableb,vwhom?An intellec- and a number of possibleoptions, but it is always a question of responding to
tual?A militant?A prolessionalrevolutionary?Perhaps,but in the distanceI specificdemandsto produce- production here being taken in the widest sense
'You are going to be a psychoanalyst.'
beganto hear somethingsaying, (it canreferto entertainmentor education as well as to consumergoods).The
Note. however. that these different orders must not be seen on the same production of the institution remains a sub-whole wirhin production as a
ievel. A certain tvpe of group initiation has its own special imprint: real whole.It is a residue,suggestingwhat Lacan callsthe objetpetit'a'.What are
the laws governing the formation o[ institutions? Is there not a general
q. Freud. ()roup Ps-rchologlt
and the 'lnal1sisofthe Ego,p. t4t. problemof the production of institutions?
InstitutionalPsychotheraPv The Group and the Person 3 r
3o
s r o d u c ei n s t i t u t i o n s ; t hcer e a t i v er u m b l i n g s
o l e c o l l d s a yt h a r r e y o l u t i o n p Eventod.a1,, in both the technologicaland the industrialfields,the organiza-
that ulrleashedthe French revolution rvere luxuriant in this respect'But tion of'production and even the internal structure of companiesare still
bewareof spelling revolution with a capitai R. Things happenedby way of largelydependenton the modelsset up by capitalisrn.We are alsoseeingthe
successive modilications,and any masterplan remainedentirel)'abstractand importationinto Russia and Czechoslovakiaof the capitalist partern of mass
never put into eflect:this is evident in, for instance,the successive constitu- consumption ofcars. It looksas though the plannedstructureofthe socialist
tions drafted bv the French revolution.Only with the historvof the rvorkers' States is not capableolpermitting the emergence olanv form of originalsocial
movementsince lvlarx have we seena consciousplan settingout to produce creativitvin responseto the dentandsofdiflerentsocialgroups.Verv diflerent
non-r"rtopian institutional lnodelsfor reorgauizingthe structureof the State- wasthe situationafter the r9r7 revolution, beforethe Stalinist terror took
witl'r a view to its I'uturer',itheling awa.v- for starling up a revolutionary over.Though the sovietsrapidly degeneratedat the masslevel, there were
power, for setting up political and trade-union bodies aiming (at least in someintensivelycreative 1.earsin a number of specificareas - cinema,
theorv) to fuifil the demands of the class struggle' It is noteworthy that architecture, education,sexuality,etc. Even Freudianismmade considerable
organizationalproblems have olten more truly engenderedsplinter groups, progress. The r 9 r 7 revolution is still chargedwith a powerful group Eros, and
major battles, even schisms,than have ideologicaldivergences;and with it will Iong continue to exercisethat porver: the vast lorcesofsocial creativity
Lelinism, the problem of organizationbecamethe primordial one. Debates unleashed by it illuminated the field ofresearchin all spheres.
abor-rtthe party line, the signifiedand the signification\'\'erevery often no \\'e may rvellbe witnessingthe darvnof a new revolutionarydevelopmer-rt
more rh,{l'la lront to conceallvhat was at issueat the levelof the organization' thatwill follow on lrom that sombre period, but we are still too closeto the
ai signifier,which at timeswent down to the tiniestdetail.Who shouldconrol dailver,entsofhistorl.to seeit clearlv.The extraordinaryway that bureau-
rl.risor that authority?Horv should the unions be relatedto the Party?What cratization tookplacein the BolshevikParty and the sovietStateunderStalin
tvasto be the role ofthe soviets? seemsto me comparableto neurotic processes that becomemore violent as
There is of course a generai problem about the subjectiveprocesses of the instinctsunderlying them are more powerful. The Stalin dictatorship
'breakthroughgroups' tl-rroughout history,but for the moment I r'r'antsimply I couldneverhave taken so excessivea lorm had it not neededto repressthe
to fbcusthe idea ol the subjectgroup on the birth ofrevolutionarygroups,ru fastest-florr'ing currentolsocial expressionthe world haseverknown. It must
I
These groups make a spccial point of linking. or tr)'ing to link, theit alsobe recognizedthat the voluntarismofthe Leninist organizationand its
I
org:rnizationoptions ver)' closel,v theil revolutionaryprogramme. His- s,vstematic mistrust of the spontaneityof the massesundoubtediyled it to
"vith missseeingthe revolutionarypossibilitiesrepresentedby the soviets.In fact
torically,,we can point to one great creative event that was stifled by the
hegemonyof stalinism in the USSR and in the Communist International. thereneverwasany real theory of sovietorganizationin Leninism:'All power
Even today, most revolutionarytendenciesstili seeorganizationalproblems to the soviets'was only a transitional slogan, and the sovietswere soon
in the lramework within which thev were lormulated fift,vvearsago by Lenin. centralized to suit the Bolsheviks'determinationto maintain absolutecontrol
Irnperialism,on the other hand, seemsto have been capableof producing of all porverin view of the rise of counter-revolutionaryattack fi-om both
relative institutional solutions enabling it to escapefrom even the most withinand without. The only institutionsthat remainedimportant were the
catastrophicordeals.After the crisisof I929 it producedthe Nen' Deal; after Stateporr'er,the Party and the armv. The systemsof organizationaldecentra-
tl-reSecondWolld \\rar it was able to organize'reconstruction' and re-mould lizationestablished by the BolshevikParty during the yearsofunderground
iuternational relations. These were, olcourse. only partial measures) effected struggle disappearedin lavour of centralism.The Internationalwas militar-
bv tria.l and error, since the dominant imperialism had lormulated no izedrvilly-nilly, and the various organizationsin sympathy with Bolshevism
consistentpolicy or aims. But in the terms of production,thev have enabled were made to accept the absurd 'Trventy-One Points'. Enormous revol-
inrperialism to remain considerablvin advance ol the so-calledsocialist utionarvlorcesall over the world thus found themselvesarbitrarily cut off
Statesin its capacity for institutional creativity. But in the socialistStates from their proper sociaicontext, and some Communist bodiesnever really
nor"reof the maior projectsofreform since r956 hasi-etseenthe light ofday. In recovered. (The Communist movement was unable, above all, to become
this respectit is the diflerencethat is crucial.At the time olthe first Five Year established and organizedin vast areas ofwhat we today call the Third World
-presumablyto indicatethat it is'a world apart'.)
Plan, Russia r.vasintroducing capitalist Productionplans into its lactories
The samepattern of organization (Partir - Central Committee - Politburo
- secretariat- secretary-general;and mass organizations, links between
r o . l t u o u l d b e p a r t i c u l a r l vi n t c r e s t i n gt o a p p l v r h i s i d e a t o p o p u l a r r e l i g i o u sh e r e s i e s
32 Institutional Psychotherapy
The Group and the Person 33
Partv and people,s16.)is just as disastrousin the internationalCommunist
rro!'ementersa whole. The samesort of militant superstructures, It may be said that the working classmust simpll' e{Iecta 'restitution'ol
established
in a revolutionarycontext,are supposedto supply to the organizationalneeds thesesubjectiveprocedures,that they must becomea disciplinedarmv of
o{'a highiy irrdustrializedsocialistState.This absurdity is productiveof the and so on. Yet surelywhat they are seekingis somethingdiflerent-
militants
\4,orstl)ureaucraticperversions.How can the sarnehandfulof'menproposeto thevrvantto producea visibleaim for their activitiesand struggles.To return
direct everything at once - State bodies,organizationsofl,oung people,of tothenotionsI put forward provisionally,I would say that the revolutionary
wolkers and ofpeasants,cultural activity, the armv, etc.,erc.- with noneof organizationhas become separated lrom the signifier of the working class's
discourse, and becomeinsteadclosedin upon itselfand antagonisticto any
the intermediateauthoritieshavingthe leastautonor.r.r1, in working out its own
line of actior-r?
Whether or not it givesrise to contradictionswith this tendency expression ofsub.jectivitvon the part ofthe various sub-wholesand groups,
or t.hat,or to confrontationsthat cannot be resolvedsimply bv arbitration thesubjectgroups spoken of by Marx. Group subjectivitv can then express
liorri above. itselfonj by way ofphantasy-making, which channelsit offinto the sphereof
Never has the internationaiistideal fallen so lorvl The reaction ol the theimaginary.To be a worker, to be a young person,automaticallymeans
pro-Chinesemovementshas beento preacha return to Stalinistorthodoxy,as sharinga particular kind of (most inadequate)group phantasy.To be a
revisedand correctedbv Mao Tse-tung,but in fact it is hard ro seehorvthey militantworker,a militant revolutionary,meansescapinglrom that imagin-
rvill resolr.etheselundamental problerns.At the end of the iast century',a aryworld and becoming connectedto the real texture ofan organization, part
militant was someonelormed by the struggle, who could break with the of the prolongation of an open formalization of the historical process. In
dominant ideologvand could toleratethe absurditvof dailv life, the hurnilia- eflect, thesametext for analysisofsocietyand its classcontradictionsextends
tiorrsof repression,and evendeath itself, becausethereu'as no doubt in his into both the text of a theoretical/politicalsystem and the texture of the
mind that everyblow to capitalismwas a stepon the h,ayto a socialistsociety. organization. There is thus a double articulationat three levels:that of the
The only context in which we find such revolutionariestoday is that of spontaneous, creativeprocessesof the masses;that of their organizational
guerrilla uarfare, of which Che Guevara has ieft us such an extraordinarv expression; and that of the theoreticallormulation of their historical and
politic|.
account in his Testarnettt| strategic aims.
The political or syndical sr1,leof the Communist organizationsof today Not having grasped this double articulalion, the workers' movement
tends to be totally humourless.The bureaucrat experiencespolitics and unknot'inglylalls into a bourgeoisindividualistideologi,.In reality,a group
is not just the sum of a nurnber of individuals: the group does not move
svndicalisnrin the short term;he is oft.enfelt to be an outsiderat work, even
though his comradesrecognizethe meritsof what he is doing,and rely on him
immediately lrom 'I' to 'you', from the leaderto the rank and frle,lrom the
- at his request* asone would rely on a public service.There ale exceptionsJ partyto themasses. A subjectgroup is not embodiedin a delegatedindividual
a
whocanclaim to speakon its behalf: it is primarily an intentionto act, based
great manv indeed.who are genuinemilitants of the peoplein thoseorgan-
izations,but the party machinemistusts them, keepingthenron a tighr rein, on a provisionaltotalizationand producing somethingtrue in the develop-
mentof its action..UnlikeAlthusser,the subjectgroup is not a theoretician
and ends up bl'destrovingthem or trying to expeithem.
producingconcepts;it producessignifiers,not signification;it producesthe
it is alwavs the massof the peoplewho havecreatednew fcrrn.is ofstruggle:
'invented' institutionand institutionalization,not a party or a line; it modifies the
it was thev r.vho soviets,thet,rvho set ap ad hacstrike committees,
generaldirectionofhistorl', but does not claim to write it; it interpretsthe
thev rvho first thought of'occupationsin t936. The Party and the unionshave
situation,and with its truth illuminates all the formulations coexisting
systematicallvretreatedfrom the creativitv of the people;indeed,sincethe
simultaneously in the workers' movement,Today, the truth olthe NLF in
Stalin peliod, they have not n-lerelyretreatedbut have positivelyopposed
Vietnamand the Democratic Republic of Vietnam illuminates the whole
innovation of any kind. One has only to recall the part played by the
rangeof possibilitieslor struggle against imperialism that now exist, and
communists in France at the Liberation, when they used lorce as lvell as
revealsthe real meaningofthe period ofpeaceful coexisrence that lollowed
persuasionto reintegrateinto the framelr,orkolthe Stateall the new formsof
theYaltaand Potsdamagreements. Today, too, the struggleofrevolutionary
struggleand organizationthat had emerged.This resultedin rvorkscommit-
organizations in Latin America brings into questionall the lormulationsol
teeswithout porver,and a Social Securitl,that is merely a form of delayed
the workers'movementand all the sociologicaltheoriesrecognizedby the
wagesto be nranipulatedbv managementand the Stateso as ro control the
bourgeois mind. Yet one cannot say that Che Guevara,Ho Chi-minh, or the
working classand so on.
leadersofthe NLF are producersofphilosophicalconcepts:it is revolution-
g4 Institutional Psychotherapv
The Group and the Person 35
ary actionthat becomesspeechand interpretation,independentofany formal phantasymechanismsof this nature are still at work in capitalist societies.
studl' and examinatiorrof the totality of what is said and done.This doesnot
The rvorkers'movement seemsto be peculiarl,vunfitted to recognizethose
nlean that one has no right to sa,r'anything - on the contrary, one can say
mechanisms; it relatessubjectiveprocessesto individual phenomena,and
what one wants all the more lreely preciselybecause'what one saysis less
lails to recognizethe series of phantasies which actually make up the real
irnportant than what is being done.Sa2ingis not always /oizg! fabricol the whole organizationand solidity ol the masses.To achieveany
Thi.sbringsus to a mofe generalproblenr:does'saying'meanan\,thingmore
understanding ofsocial groups, one must get rid ofone kind ofrationalist-
tharrthe productionofits own sense? Sureiy,what the wholeanall.sisof Capilal
positivist vision of the individual (and of history). One must be capableof
makesciear is precisel,v that behind every processolproduction, circulation
grasping the unitiesunderlyinghistoricalphenomena,the modesof symbolic
and consumptionthereis an order ofsymbolicproductionthat constitutesthe
communicationproper to groups (where there is often no mode of spoken
very labric of everv relationship of prodrrction, circulation and consumption, contract),the systemsthat enable individuals not to lose themselvesin
and ofall the structura!orders,It is impossibleto separatethe productionof
interpersonal relationships,and so on. To me it is all reminiscentof a flock of
an) consumercornmodityfrom the institution that supportsthat production,
migratingbirds: it has its own structure, the shape it makes in the air, its
The sarnecan be said of teaching,training, research,etc.The Statemachine
function,its direction - and all determined without benefit of a single central
and the machine ofrepression produce anti-production, that is to say signifiers
committee meeting,or elaborationof a correctline. Generallyspeaking,our
that exist to block and preventthe emergenceofany strbjectiveprocesson the
understanding of group phenomenais very inadequate.Primitive societies
part of the group. I believer.,u'e
should think of repression.or the existenceof arecollectivelylar better ethnologiststhan the scholarssent out to study
the State,or bureaucratization.not as passiveor inert, but as dynamic.Just
them.The gangof young men that lorms spontaneouslyin a sectionof town
as Freud could talk <lfthedvnarnicprocesses underlf ing psvchicrepression)
doesnot recruit membersor chargea subscription;it is a matter of recogni-
so it must be understoodthat, like the odysse,v ol things returning to their
'rightful place', tionandinternalorganization.Organizingsucha collectivedependsnor only
bureaucracies,churches.universitiesand other such bodies
on the words that are said, but on the lormation of images underlying the
develop ar entire ideologl and set of phantasiesof repressionin order to
constitution of any group, and theseseemto me somethingfundamental- the
cor-lnterthe processes ofsocial creationin everysphere.
supportupon which all their other aims and objectsrest. I do not think one
The incapacity of the rvorkers'movement to analysesuch institutions'
canfulll'graspthe acts!attitudesor inner life ofanl'group without grasping
conditionsolploduction, and their function olanti-production, doomsit to
the thematicsand functions of its 'acting out' of phantasies.Hitherto the
remain passivein the laceolcapitalist initiativesin that sphere.Consider,for
workers'movement has functioned only by way of an idealist approach to
instance, the university and the armv. It mav appcar that all that is
theseproblems.There is, lor instance,no descriptionofthe specialcharacter-
happening in a university is the transmissionof messages,of bourgeois
isticsof theworkingclassthat establishedthe ParisCommune, no description
knowledge;but w,eknow that in reality a lot elseis alsohappening,including
of its creative imagination. Bourgeois historians o{Ier such meaningless
a rvhole operation ol moulding people to fit the key functions of bourgeois
comments as that 'the Hungarian workerswere courageous',and then pass
societyarrd its regulatoryimages.In the armv, at.ieastthe traditionalarmy,
on to a formal,self-enclosed analysisof the variouselementsof socialgroups
not a greatdeal of what happens is put into words.But rheStatew,ouldhardly
as though they had no bearing on the problems of the class struggle or
spendso much, year after year, on teachingyoung men.iustto march up and
organizationalstrategy, and without reference to the lact that the laws
don,n; that is only a pretext: the real purposeis to train people,and make
governing the group's formations of images are different in kind from
them relate to one another, with a \.iew to the clearly stated objectiveof
contractuallarvs- like those relative to setting up a limited company, for
disr:ipline.Their training is not merelr,an apprenticeshipin military tech-
instance,or the French Association Law of r 9o r . You cannot relate the sum ol'
niques, but the establishmentof a mechanism of subordination in their
a group'sphantasyphenomenato any s_vstem of deductionsworking only
imaginations. Similar examplescan be found in so-calledprimitive societies:
with motivations made fully explicit at the rational level. There are some
to be a full member of the tribe, one has to fulfil certain conditions; one must
momentsin historywhen repressedmotivesemerge,a whr-.rle phantasyorder,
successfulll' undergo certain ceremonies of initiation - that is, of social
that can be translated,among other things, into phenomenaof collective
integration by means perhaps ol mingling one's blood with a primordial
identification with a leader- for instanceNazism. The individual 'I' asks
totemic image.and by developinga senseolbelonging to the group. And, in
whcrethe imageis, the identifying image that makesus all membersof 'Big
lact, underli ing the rational accountone may giveolsuch group phenomena,
Boy's'gangrather than Jojo's';Jojo is that dark fellow with the motor-bike,
36 Institutional Psychotherapy The Group and the Person g7
,.r'herezrs it may be someone- anvone- else who has the characteristics specificallv imaginary mode of represenration,thar it is the medium of the
demandedby the phantasyworld of this particulargroup.Similarlv' the great groupphantasies;in reality, however, we are dealing not so much ,"vithtr.t,o
leadersof history were peopleu'ho servedas somethingon which to hang sortsof group, but two functions, and the two may even coincide. A passive
'be 'be
society'sphar.rtasies. When Jojo, or Hitler, tells people to Jojos' or groupcan suddenlythrow up a mode ofsubjectivity that developsa whole
Hitlers', thel' a;" not sPeakingso much as circulatinga particular kind of system of tensions,a whole internal dynamic. on the other hand, any subject
inrage to be used in the group:'Through that particularJojo we shall find groupwill havephaseswhen it gets bogged down at the level of the imaginary:
ourselves.'But who actually saYSthis?The whole point is that no one sa2sit, then,ilit is to avoid becoming the prisoner of its own phantasies,irs active
becauseif one were to saVit to oleself, it would becomesomethingdifferent. principlemust be recovered by way of a system of analytic interpretation.
At the level of the group's phantasystructure' we no longer {ind language Onemight perhaps sa)' rhat the dependent group permanently represenrsa
'I' and an other through words and a
operating in this way, setting up an potentialsub-wholeofthe subject group,lrand, as a counrerpolntto the
system of significations.There is, to start rvith, a kind of solidification,a formulations of Lacan, one might add that only a partial, detachedi.stitu-
settirrg inro a mass; thisis us,and other people are different, and usually not tionalobjectcan provide it with a basis.
worth bothering with - there is no communication possible.There is a Takenvo other examples:
territorializationof phantas;-,an imagining of the grouP as a body, that First,the psychiatrichospital.This is a srrucruretotally dependenron rhe
absorbssubjectivity into itself. From this there flow all the phenomenaof 'arioussocialsystemsthat support it - the state, SocialsecJrity and so on.
nrisunderstanding,racism, regionalism,nationalism and other archaisms Groupphantasiesare built up around finance, mental illness,the psychi-
that have utterly defeatedthe understandingofsocial theorists atrist,the nurse, etc. In any particular department, however, u ..pu.uta
.AndrdN{alrauxoncesaid on televisionthat the nineteenthcenturylvasthe objectivemay be established that leads to a profound reordering of thut
centLrryof internationalism,whereasthe twentiethis the centarvof national' phantasizing. That objectivemight be a therapeuticclub. We may:saythat
ism. He might have added without exaggerationthat it is also the centuryof thatclubis the institutionalobjective(Lacan's objet petit'a', arrheinstitution-
regionalism and particularism. In sornebig cities in America' going from one al level)rhat makesit possibleto start up an analytic process.clearly the
s6eet into the next is like changing tribes. Yet there is an ever-increasing analvticalstructure, the anal\ser, is not the therapeutic club itself, but
uliversalitv of scientific signifiers;production becomesmore worldwide something dependentupon that institutionalobiective,which I havedefined
everv day; every advancein scholarshipis taken uP b.vresearchersevery- elsewhere as an institutional r.acuole.It might. for example,be a group of
rvhere; it is conceivablethat there might one dav be a single supgr' nurses, psychiarrists or patients that forms that analytical,hollow srruc;ure
inlormation-machinethat couid be usedfor hundredsof thousandsoldi{Ier- whereunconsciousphenomena can be deciphered, and which ficr a time
ent researchers. In the scientificfield, ever.vthingtoda) is shared:the sameis bringsa subject group into being wirhin the massive strucrure of rhe
tiue of literature,art and so on. However,this doesnot mean that we are not psychiatrichospital.
n,itnessir.rg a generaldrawing inwards in the field. not of the real, but the Second, the Communist Party. Like its massorganizations(trade unior-rs,
imaginary, and the imaginary at its most regressive.In fact, the two youthorganizations, women's organizations,etc.) the Party can be wholly
phenomenaare complementary:it isjust when thereis most universalitythat manipulated by all the structuresof a bourgeoisState, and can work as a
n,e feel the need to return as lar as possible to national and regional hctor for integration.In a senseone can e'en say that the developmentofa
'de-code'and
Cistinctness.The more capitalism follows its tendency to modern,capitalistState needssuch organizationsofworkers by workers in
,cle-territorialize',
the more does it seek to awaken or re-arryaken artificial order to regulatethe relations of production. The crushing of rvorkers,
territorialitiesand residual errcodings,thus moving to counteractits own organizations in Spainafter i936 causeda considerabledelay to rhe proeress
teDdency. of Spanishcapitalism, whereas the various ways of integrating the working
How can we understand these group functions of the imaginary, and all dasspromotedin thosecountries that had popular lronts in ,r
936, or national
their variations?How can we get away from that persistentcouple:machinic frontsin 1945,enabled the State and the various social orsanizations
universalityand archaicparticularitY?My distinctionbetweenthe two types introduced by the bourgeoisieto readjust,and to producene* strJctu.esand
ol-groupis not an absoluteone. I sa.vthat the subjectgroup is articulatedlike new relationsof production lavouring the development of the capitalist
a languageand iinks itself to the sum of historicaldiscourse,rvhereasthe I r , T h i s u ' o u l db e a w a v o u ! o f R u s s e l l ' s p a r a d o x ,a w , a yo f a v o i d i n g r c i f y i n g i t a s t o r a i i z i n g
a
dependent group is structured according to a spatial mode, and has a
38 Institutional Psychotherap.v The Group and the Person 39
economyas a whole (salarvdifferentials,wages,bargainingover conditions, individualphantasiestake shapeand changein the group, or is it the other
etc.). Thus one can seehow, in a sense,the subordinateinstitutionalobject wayround?One could equally say that they are nor fundamentallypart of
thar the Paltl'or the CGT (the CommunistTrade Llnion Federation) anythingoutsidethe group, and that it is a sheeraccident that rhey have
representsas fir as the workinc class are concernedhelps to keep the fallenbackon that particular'body'- an alienatingand Iaughablefiction,the
capitaliststructurein good repair. of an individual driven into solitude and anxietv preciselv
On the other hand - and to explain this calls for a topologicalexampleof societl'misunderstands and represses the real body and its desire.In
some complexitl,- that same passiveinstitutionalobject,indirectly control- eithercase,this embody'ingof the individual phantasyupon the group,or this
led bl the bourgeoisie,may give rise within itself to the developmentof latching on ofthe individual to the group phantasv,transfersonro rhe group
new processes of subjectivation.This is undoubtedlythe caseon the smallest thedamagingeflectolthosepartial objecrs- objet petit a'- describedby Lacan
scale,in the Partv cell and the union chapel.The lact that the working class, asthe oral or anal object, the voice, the look and so on, governedby the
once its revolutionarvinstinctshave been aroused,persistsin studyingand totalityof the phallic function, and constituting a threshold ol existential
getting to knou' itself through this developmentwithin a dependentgroup realitythat the subject cannot cross.Hon'ever,group phantasizinghas no
crearesrensionsand contradictionsrrhich, though not immediatelvvisibleto 'safetyrail'
to compare rvith those rhat prolect the libidinal instinctual
oursiders(not quoted in the pressor the ofFcialstatementsof the leaders),still system, and has to dependon temporary and unstablehomeostaticequilib-
producea u'hoielange oflragmentedbut real subjectivation. ria.Wordscannot really serveto mediate its desire; they operateon behalf of
A group phantasyis not the sameas an individual phantasy,or anv sumof thelaw.Groups opt for the sign and the insignia rather rhan for the signifier,
indir,iduai phantasies,or the phantasvof a particular group.l2 Every indi- The order of the spoken rvord tips over into slogans. If, as Lacan savs, the
vidual phantasyleadsback to the individual in his desiringsolitude.But it ation ol the subject resultslrorn one signifier relating to another,
can happen that a particuiar phantasy,originatingwithin an individual or a thengroup subjectivity is recognizable rarher in a splitting, a Spaltung,the
p.rrticulargroup, becomesa kind of collectivecurrenc.y,l3 put into circulation of a sub-whole that supposedlyrepresentsthe legitimacy and
and providing a basis for group phantasizing. Similarly, as Freud pointed ty'olthe group
out, we pass lrom the order of neurotic structure to the stage of group In other words, this remains a lundamentally precariousprocess.The
Jornnti.on. The group mar', for iustance,organize its phantasiesaround a tendencyis to return to phenomena of imaginary explosion or phallicization
leader,a-successluifigure, a doctor, or some such. That chosenindividual her than to coherentdiscourse.From this point ofview, apart from dis-
pliiys the role of a kind of signifving mirror, upon r,r'hichthe collective inguishing betweenindividual and group phantasy,one can alsodistinguish
phantasy-makingis relracted.It mav appear that a particular bureaucratic t ordersofgroup phantasy:on the one hand, the basicphantasiesthat
or maladjustedpersonalityis working againstthe interestsof the group,when dependon the subordinatecharacter of the group and, on the other, the
in lact both his personalityand his action are interpretedonlv in termsof the sitionalphantasiesconnectedrvirh the internal processofsubjectivation
eroup. This dialectic cannot be confined to the plane of the imaginary. corresponding to various reorganizationswithin rhe eroup. trVeare led to
Incleed,the split between the tltalitaian ideal of the group and its various istinguishtu'o possibletypes ofobject: establishedinstitutions,and tran-
partial phantasy processesproduces cleavagesthat may put the group in a ional objects.r+ With the first, the institution never sets out to face the
position to escapelrom its corporizedand spatializingphantasyrepresenta- oltheinstitutionalobject,though it is obsessed by it;just as rhechurch
tion. IIthe processthat seems,at the levelof the individual authority, to be itsGodand hasno wish to changehim, soa dominant classhaspou er and
,rver-determined and hedgedin by'the Oedipuscomplexis transposedto the not considerrr'hetherit might not be betterto give thar power to anyone
level ofgroup phantasizing,it actuallyintroducesthe possibilitvofa revolu- !lVith thesecond,on the other hand, a revolutionarymovementis a good
tionarl, re-ordering.In eflect,identificationwith the prevailingimagesolthe mpleof somethingthat keepsaskingwhetherit is right, whetherit should
group is by no meansalways static, for the badgeolmembership often has totallytranslormingitself, correctingits aim and so on. Of courseall the
links with narcissisticand death instincts that it is hard to define. Do tutionalobjectsin a fixed societycontinueto evolveregardless,but their
r r.
'Ihis
is the dilTercncebetweenmv idea ofgroup phantasy and Bion's idea of the phantasyoftir tionis not recognized.One myth is replacedbl'another,one religionby
group.
. t4. The notionofaniiltitulilnal lbjectiscomplementan to the'parr object'ofFreudian theory and
r j . A n d , c o n r , e r s e l yi ,s n o r r h e i n d i v i d u a l o h a n t a s yt h e i n d i v i d u a t e ds m a l l c h a n g eo f c o l l e c t i r e 'transitional
object' as originally defined by D. W. !Vinnicott ,,c1.La Ps2chanaltu,5. Presses
nhan tasv nroduction?
de France, r95g)
40 Institutional Psychotherapv The Group and the Person 4r
zurother,iryhichmav result in a ruthlesswar and end in deadlock.Whena andrr'hosr: phantasl'world, lreed from reality, can opcrateon its own lo a
monetar! or economics-vstem collapses,bad moneydrivesout good,the gold int of hallucinationand delusion,A group will end up by hallucinating
standardis replacedby basemetal, and the economyis convulsed.Similarly withitsphantasies in just the sameway. If it is to interpret them, it will have
when a marriage fails; it u,asbasedon a contract of a kind not fundamentally toresortto irrationalacts,wild gestures,suicidalbehaviour,play-actingolall
different liom a banking contract, and there is no scopefor development,The s, until thosephantasiescan find some means of becomingpresentto
contracrcan be changedbv divorce, but that is only a legal procedureand 'esand manifestingthemselvesin the order of representation.
does r.rotfundamentallvsolve anything. Indeed the chain is snappedat its I saidearlierthat the unconsciousis in direct contactrvith history.But onlv
weakestlink: the children are split in two w'ithout any thought of conse' certainconditions.The fundamentalproblemin institutionalanall,siscan
quencesin the sphereof the imaginarv.When a revolutionaryparty changes expressed like this:is it absurd to think that socialgroupscan overcomethe
theories,however, there is no logical reasonwhy it should lead to a tragedy,or contradictionbetweena processol production that reinforcesthe mechanisms
a religious \4'ar: the regirnen of the word still tries to readjust the old groupalienation,and a processof bringingto light the conscioussubject that
formulationsto brins them into harmonv with the new, s and the unconscioussubject,this latter being a processthat graduallv
To foster analysisand interventionin group phantas,v(including family dispels moreand more of the phantasiesthat causepeopleto turn to God, to
groups) would implv a considerationof preciselythesephenomenaof the science or to any othersupposedsourceofknowledge?In other words,can rhe
imaginary. Take another example:generationsof miners have worked in a at once pursue its economic and social objectiveswhile allowing
particltlal mine, and it has becomea kind of religion to them; one day, the ualsto maintain their own accessto desireand someunderstandinsof
technocrats suddenly realize that the coal they produce is no longer profit- r owndestiny?Or, better still: can the group lace the problem of its own
able. This of coursetakesno accountof the e{Iecton the miners: thoseofa th?Can a group rvith a historicmissionenvisagethe end of that mission-
certain age are told that they are to retire early, lvhile others are oflered the Stateenvisagethe withering awa1,of the State?Can revolutionary
re-training schemes.Similar things happen in Africa, Latin America and esenvisage the end of their so-calledmissionto lead the masses?
Asia, where peopleswho have had the samesocialorganizationfor thousands Thisleadsme to stressthe distinctionbetweengroup phantasyas it relates
of years are steamrollered out of existence by the intrusion of a capitalist dependent groups,and the transitionalphantasyofindependent subject
systerr interestedonly in the most e{ficientwavs of producing cotton oI Thereis a kind olphantasizingthat appearsin static societiesin the
rubber. These are extremeexamoles,but thev are the losical extensionof a of myths,and in bureaucratizedsocietiesin the form o[ roles.u,hich
rnultitude of situations - those of children, of w'omen, of the mad, ucesthe most wonderful narratives:'When I'm twenty-fiveI'll be an
hornosexuals,ofblacks. In disregarding or failing to recognizesuch problerns r; then a coloneland later on a general;I'll get a medal when I retire;
of group phantasy,we createdisastersu,hoseultimate consequences may be I'll die . , .' But group phantasizingis somethingmore than this,because
immeasurable. includesan additional referencepoint that is not centredon a particular
Analt,sing the institutional object neans channelling the action of the ject,or on the individual'sparticular placein the socialscale:'l'r,e beenin
imasinzrtionbetweenone structureatrdanother;it is not unlikewhat happens Frencharmy lor a long time; the French army has ahvaysexisted,it is
to an animal in the moultinq season.To move lrom one representation
, so if I keep my place in the hierarchy, I too shall have somerhingof
oneself to anotherr though it may involve crises,at least retains continuity. eternal.This makeslife easierwhen I'm frightenedof dying, or when mv
When an animal loses its coat it remains itself, but in the social order, calls me a fool. After all, I am a regimental sergeant majorl' The
ren-rovingthe coat shatters the world of the imaginarv and annihilates titutionalobject underlving the phantasy of military rank ('I'm not
generations.When the group is spiit up, when it doesnot know the scopeofits ')
serr.es to unfurl a range ofrelerencesofa homosexualnature that
phantirsiesand has no control of then-r,it developsa kind of schizophrenic idessocietl'witha blind and relativelyhomogeneous body of peoplewho
action !r,ithin itsell: the phantasl' mechanismsof identification, and of thesell ink lrom anv self-questioningabout lile and death, and who are ready to
operate all the more freely and independently as the function of the word as e anv repression,to torture, to bombard civilian populationswith
collectiveutteranceis replacedby a sructural formation ofnon-subjec lm and so on. The continuationin time of the institution at the level of
utterances.While the group discoursesin a vacuum about its aims and syis thusa kind ofimplicit supporrlor the denialofthe realityofdeath
pul'poscs,identificationshal,ethe samekind of lreerein as theywould havein the individuallevel. The capitalist controlling severaltrusts also draws
a schizophrenicrvhosespeechis disconnectedlrom bodily representa lrom this 'senseofeternity'. In his position at the rop ofthe hierarchl',
+2 Institutional Psychotherapy The Group and the Person 43
he fulfils a kind of'priestlyfunction for thosebelow, ritualizing eternityand tic, then, most assuredly,the transitionalphantasylormationsof
coniuringaway death.He is the servantof God/Capital.Facedwith pain and groupwill enableme to make progress.
alraid of desire,the individual clingsto hisjob, his role in the family and the The demand lor revolution is not essentiallyor exclusivelyat the level of
other functionsthat provide alienatingphantasvsupports.In the dependent goods;it is directed equally to taking account ofdesire. Revolution-
group, phantasvmasksthe central truths ofexistence,but none the less,via theory,to the extent that it keeps its demands solely at the level of
the dialecticofsignifiers,part objects,and the way theseintersectwith the asingpeople'smeansof consumption,indirectlyreinforcesan attitudeof
sequencesofhistory, it keepsin being the possibilityofan emergenceofthe ivity on the part of the working class.A communist socierymust bc
truth. not with referenceto consumption, but to the desireand the goalsof
Would a group whosephantas) functionswere working rvell producethe ind. The philosophicrationalismthat dominatesall the expressions of
transitionalphantasiesofa subjectgroup?At [,a Borde,for instance,whena workers'movement like a super-ego ficstersthe resurgenceof the old
group feelsthat it is getting somewhere,that it is achievingsomething,the of paradisein anotherworld, and the promiseof a narcissisticfusion
most thanklesstaskstakeon a quite di{ferentmeaning,evensuchtediousjobs theabsolute.Communist partiesare by way of having scientific'knowl-
as taking up paving stones or working on an assemblv-line.At such a 'ofhow
to createa lorm oforsanization that would satisfythe basicneeds
mornent, people's positions in relation to one another, their individual all individuals.What a falseclaim! There can be socialplanning in terms of
characteristics, their peculiarst.vle,their way of speakingand so on, all take izing production - though there still remain a lot of unanswered
on a new meaningl you leel that you know people better and take more ions- but it cannot claim to be able to giveaprioi answersin terms of the
interest in them. In a psychiatric r,vardwhere an analytic processaiming to objectives ofindividualsand subjectgroups.
producesuch an eflectis successfully established- though it never survives All of rvhichis just to say yet again that the ways to truth are, and will
-
lor long everythinginhibiting or threateningin the differentiationofroles nueto be,an individual matter. I realizethat what I am sayineherecan
can be doneaway with: everyonebecomes'oneofus'though that includesthe interpreted as an appealto 'respecthuman values'and other nonsenseof
whoie particularist folk-memory that that phrase implies. Absurd though kind. Such interpretationsare convenient,becausethey spare one the
such folklorism may seem,it does not prvent the'senseof belonging'from ity of seekingfurther for an answer to the problem. I can hear some
being eflective.It is a f;actthat ifa boy is to learn to read or to stop wettinghis saying,'There's a man who hasn't got over his experienceof the
trousers)he must be recognizedas being'at home', being'one of us'. If he nistPartyand ofthe groupusculesi5 he'sbeenin. But all he had to do
crossesthat threshold and becomesre-territorialized,his problemsare no stopgoing!'Bravingridicule,however,I persistin declaringthat what is
ionger posedin terms of phantasy; he becomeshimselfagain in the group, and issueis quite different. It is, first of all, at the core of the revolutionary
'When shallI - not the war of u,ords,but the real strugglebeingwaged
managesto rid himselfof the questionthat had haunted him: themselves
get to be there,to be part ol thd!, to be "one of them"?' As long as he failsin guerrillas and others.Either we fall into post-Stalinistthinking and come
that, his compulsivepursuit ofthat goal preventshis doing anything elseat grief,or we find.pnotherway and survive.
all. There are a lot of other things too - far more serious than wonderins
T'l.risgetting to the limits of the imagination seems to me to be the herone can work out some compromisebetweenthe bureaucratof the
fundamental problem of setting up any management body that is not to be mentand desire.Either the revolutionaryworkers'movement and the
technocratic,any massparticipationbody for whateverpurposethat is notto will recover their speech via collectiwagentsof utterancethat will
be unhealthily rationalist. It is not a matter of an independentcategory:if that they are not caught up again in anti-productionrelations(as
these phantasizing lormations are not explored anah'tically, they operateas asa work of analysiscan be a guarantee), or matters u.ill go lrom bad to
death-dealingimpulses.From the point when I set out to enjoy my mem' . It is obviousthat the bourgeoisieofpresent-dayneo-capitalism are not
bershipofthe Bowls Club, I can say that I am dead,in the senseofthe death isieand are not going to becomeone: they are undoubtedlythe
inherentin the eternityof Bowls Clubs. On the other hand, if a group letsme t that history has ever produced. They will not find an effectiveway
short-circuitits action with a problematicthat is open to revolution,even They will keeptrying to cobble things together, bur alwal's too late and
that group assuresme that revolution will certainly not save my life, or 'Groupuscules'
designate the ensemble of little groups lound on the left of the l-rench
provideanv solutionto certainsortsofproblem, but that its role is, in a sense, Party in thr period leading up to r968, a pejorative c o n n o t a t i o n o f t h e P a r t y
precisel,vto prevent my being in too much of a hurry to run away from that but later assumedby the groups thcmselves
4+ Institutional Ps,vchotherapy
1. e.;Jusnvhatis anti-.psychiatry?
,o.: Primarily a literary phenomenon,taken up by the mass media. It
lrom thosetwo cenres in England and ltaly, but its appearance
ledthelact that therewas considerable public interestin suchproblems,
thecontextof the 'new culture' that was cominginto existence.But it must
admittedthat, up to now, all that has been written, or said, or done in
ncehas involved only a lew nurseswho were unhappy with the existing
ation and a few dozen psychiatrists: the real interest in anti-psychiatry
beenamong the general public.
Today, one ol the 'inventors' of anti-psychiatrv, Laing, is no longer
nectedwith it; he sayshe has neverusedthe term. Basagliabelievesit is a
ification that must be exposed. Nleanwhile, in France, it has become
ing of a iiterary and cinematic genre. Peopleearn a lot of money
ishinglittle bookswith titles like 'Never Again Will I Be a Psychiatrist',
AgainWill I Bea Nurse','NeverAgainWill I BeMad'. Groupuscules
formedin its wake,like Poulidor.
r. Somcviewseiicitedb,vJean-JacquesBrochier and published in lc,Vagalinc Lilliraire,a special
' L e M o u v e m en t d e s i d i e s d e M a i r
en t i r l e d 968',May t q76
+6 Institutional Ps-vchotheraPY Anti-Psychiatry and Anti-Ps.vchoanalysis 47
But what irasreally beenirnportant is the way ant'i-psychiatry has marked .y.-;.n.:What do you leel about institutionalpsychiatrytoday?
a beginning of awareness,not only in the generalpublic, but even amgng n.c.: wonderfuMt's beginningto collapse.At alr levels.physically,to starr
,mental health workers', In my view, the discover,volthe link
p.of."..ionui rvith:almost half of our psychiatrichospitalsare rvorkingat lessthan half of
has been
betlveen ps-vchiatricrepressionand other forms of repression their full capacity.Somehospitalsthar costmillionsto build are almostemDtv
.,]or*ourl,u significant,and u'e are far lrom having felt all its repercussions (Mureaux for instance),which is partly why rhe cost per day of public
-vet. hospitalizationfor the mentally ill has risen so astronomically.It is also
However, that zrrvarenesshas been paftl)'r'itiated bv certain schoolsof coilapsingin people'sminds - no one believesin it any morel rhe policy of
who
psychoanaiysis
-be found it a good excuseto knock psychiatrv- leavingit to community menralcare (breakingdown the psychiatricinstitutioninto
a small
undersroodthat we, with our little couches,cure peoplervithout laying units, each catering lor an area with an averagepopulation of6o,ooo) has
at
hand on thenr,without ever hurting anvbodv' best a-chievednothing, and at worst resurtedin an intolerabiepopulation
'68, in the sensethat NIay surveillance.This is speciallytrue ofchild psychiatry.
t.-1.n.:Anti-psychiatrycan be connectedwith lv'Iav
';68
*u, essentiallyan artack on institutions. Mental hospitals,like prisons,
But why are the hospitalsempty?
1.-.J.a.:
people locked up - institutions which, though
rvereinstitutions for.keeping
in the middle of a ton'n, peopleliterally did not see'
r-rsually r.o.: It's a complexphenomenon,with a number of causes.I can tell vou what
they are - in no speciai order ofimportance. First, lack ofconfidence - the
r.c.: Doubts abor.rtprisonsand mental hospitalswere still very uncertainin result,among other things,of the massmedia'scoverageof anti-psvchiatry.
i 968. I r.ernember at the time having verv livelv discussiotls with friendslike
Then, perhapsparrly as a result of rhe community policy, a lot is now done
,,iai' Geismaror SergeJuly;we tried to see the militants being repressedthen
outsidehospital.But I also think that the massiveuse of rranquillizershas
ason the samelevelaseveryone else who was su{Iering- the poor, criminalsin
playeda significantrole. They are pluggednor onrv by ps'chiairists,
psl'chiat'ic patients. \'et e'en the lormer ez \'Iarch but by
gaol, the Katangais,2 'Political generalpractitionersand eventhe more or lessspecializedjournals; belorean
ipontun.i.t, ,"ho ,uerejoini.g up with the Maoists were saying, inlant has time to give its first cry, it is givena sedativeto makeit shut
- up and
prisoners,yes,and common law prisoners,ofcourse but not drug addictsl go to sleep.Hence the diminution, evenin somecasesthe disappearance,
musi be denoutrced, thev're dangerous, they can be manipu- of
b'ug addicts someof the sympromsofsociarbreakdownthat usedto land peopleup ih.
l"t.j by the police,'and so on. lVhen ia'etried to talk about so-calledpolitical psychiatrist'sor in the hospital.since about r955, chemo-therapy ",
has been
questionsin the samebreath as the problemsof madness,we were thought to usedto put an end ro whar was calledhyperactivityin psychiatricirospitals.
that surprisesno one.But It
be eccentricif not positivelydangerous.Nowada-vs keptout of hospitalnumbersofpeopleto whom a'chemicalstraitiacket,could
ir was sorrretime after'68 that we reached this point, with the settingup of the
'68 therewasalot n_owbe applied at home. But no one realizedat firsiFhat-ihe ellEctsof all
this
GIp:r anclother acti'ities of that kind. During the eventsof would be. It was important ro go on building psychiaric hospitals,especially
-
of uphea!al in psvchiatric circles but the universities and the employers
'colleqes sinceit helpedthe recoveryof the buirdingindustrv. somediparrements,itwa.s
soondealt rvith rhat: tIe1'set up that moyement of what thel'called
'Garde-Fou','Les Cahierspour la Folie', and the boasted,now really had adequatehospital praces(though what this really
of psychiatry'.The GIA,a meantwas financingthe 'industrialization'of the building industry). But
lo
,..t ull came on the scene much later, more or less in the wake of what and behold,drugs had deflecteda large part oftheir ..gulu. clientele
away
Foucar-rltancl Deleuzerveredoing in relation to prisons.l\lemory can play fromthe hosp.itals, and somepsychiatristsweredeterminedthat the hosoitals
',68 mav rvell have Iiberated all sorts of re"'olutionarY
funny rricks! N{ay shouldbe emptied.This led ro somequite seriousproblems,in poor areas,
for
attitudes,but people'sminds were still full of the bad old ideas,and it took instance,where the hospitalwas the major sourceof employment
drug
some time to open them up on problenrslike madness,homosexuality,
women's liberation and so on' 1-1.a.:The hospiralsare emptying,and psychiatryno longerberieves in irserf.
addiction,delinquency,prostitution'
But if the hospitals were built to coniain and protect and lock away
the
'[ ' K a t a n e a i s ' w a s t h e n i c k n a m eg i v e n t o t h e g a n g so f t o u g h sw h o u ' e n t i n t o t h e S o r b o n n e insane,and psychiatrywas designedto care ror them, what is their po.i,ion
z. he
cluringthestudelrtoccuPationandbeatupthestudentsandl'andalizedthebuildings'Thename nolv?
comes from the Katangan rebelsofthe Congoiesewar'
r.c.: The luture solution, stilr far in the future for France, is
c. Grotto for Inlormation about Prisons already
lVlentai Hospitals happeningin the USA. The moment someonefeelspeculiar,
4. Group for In{brmation about or breaksa
Anti-Psychiatryand Anti-Psychoanalysis 49
48 Institutional PsYchotheraPY
He is stuffedwith neighbours,everywhere?The same goeslor psychoanalysis: it is gradually
window, or takesdrugs, he is declaredto be schizophrenic' gettingto be everywhere- at school,at home,on television.
good as another' (One wonders
,.u,lquitiir.r., o, -.ihudone, one thing is as
complexities of
whetirerit might not have been better to Preserve the myriad 3.-j.n.:But it's taken someknocks- especiallyfrom Deleuzeand yourself,in
The psychiatric hospitals have been closed in a number of your Anti-Oedipus.
the old nosolo"gyl)
being exercisedin
States,but that doesnot prevent psychiatricrePression's r.c.: Don't you believeitl The psychoanalysts have remainedquite imper-
involved in systems of psych-iatric
other wa-vs. People can then become vious. Naturally enough: you try asking butchers to stop selling meat for
control*ithoutu,"'y.ef..encetopsychiatricclassifications(tramps,down. ideologicalreasons- or to becomevegetarians!Besides,from the consumer's
and-outs,the old and so on). On the other hand, a great many neuroticsJand
'mad' under the old psvchiatric point ofview psvchoanalysisworks. It works verv well indeed,and people
even thoser+ho rvould have beendescribed as
at all, lut -g.!de;go keep coming back for more, It makes senseto pay a lot for anything so
classifications, no longer go through the hospitals eflective- rather like a drug. And it raisesone a fraction in the social scale,
or are uisi[d at home by doctors and given tranquillizers'
psychoanalvsrs, which has a certain attraction, too. Anti-Oedipaswas barely noticed. What is
'raving lunatic' has becomea thing olthe past'.psychoanaly-
ir.. f hougn rhe quite funny is that, when the book came out, the PsychoanalyticalSociety
ticmadne"sscanbefioundalmosteveryr-l.here.Somepsychoanalystsmakethe recommendedpeoplejust to ignore it, and the whole thing would blow over.
in a three-1'ear-old
ludicrous cla.imthat they can diagnoseschizophrenia Which is preciselywhat happenedl No, the most tangible e{Iectof Anti-Oedipus
everyone nowadays trashes the psychiatrichospital- which is
chilcl!Almost was that it short-circuitedthe connectionbetweenpsvchoanaiysis and the
problem' notjust the
good, but it is r-rotenough.What is at issueis an overall
'io.pltul, left.
the community' and the various lorms of
but psychiaric care in
you can't make a slip olthe tongueno"vadays without finding \4'hat strikes me is that the two chief victims of the critique of
psychoanalr'srs: 1.-.J.e.:
Worst of all' someone
.orn. totul strangerinterpreting it to you mercilessll' institutionsin the past lew years have beenour two great beardedfathers,
like M6nie Grdgoireis part of the new armoury'
psychratrrc N{arx and Freud. A lot of people have attacked Marx. But you and Gilles
Deleuzehave made a specialassaulton Freud - becausethe institution of
saying, then, is.that the psychiatric institution has psychoanalysis, in whateverlorm, l.rFreud.
1.-1.1,:\{hat ,vou're
vanished only to reappear in a more subtie way? r.c.: \'es, it is Freud - but in Franceit is alsoLacan. Psychoanalysis came to
rne is that all the great France very late, when men like Lagache or Boutonnier arrived at the
n.c.: Ycs, miniaturized. And rvhat also strikes universitl',Belorethe w'arpsychoanalysis barelyexistedin France.But it has
which used !o consistof a
repressiveorganizationslike schoolsor the army' caught up since then. It had tremendousresistanceto overcome,but was
siigle institu"tional whole, are now tending to become lragmented and
mistake: very sooneveryone finally acceptedeverywhere,in Sainte-Anne,in all the laculties;evengeneral
,.uite.ed all over the place.I think this is Illich's
his own school,his own publishersare pouring it out. In other countries,on the other hand, the
will become his own mini-instrument of repression,
Freudianmovementhas beendead lor ten years.In the USA they still talk
army. The suPer-egowill invade everything' aboutJung,but it's onl.vpart o[their lolklore,Iike psychedelicmassageor Zen
relationshipsof force'
ir ,f,. gr.^t ..piessive entities there were still real Buddhism.One might think the samething will happenin France.I doubt it.
possibilitiesof struggle' In the small ones' every individual is
and there"fore In Francethe Freudian establishmenthas had a great new leaseoflife rvith
influencesand feelingsthat
bound hand and lbot by systemsofrelationships' Lacanism.Lacanismisn'tjust a re-readingof Freud; it's somethingfar more
caseimpl'vother lorms of
there is no getting to g.lp, with, and which in any despotic,both as a theoryand an institution,and far more rigid in its semiotic
,liberation,l As i see it, the policy of community psychiatry and.psycho-
corresponds to -the most subjectionofthosewho acceptit. In fact,it could easilylead to a resurgence of
analysis (and the two are now closely related) psychoanalvsis all over the world, starting with the United States.Not only
surveillanceand control'
sophisticatedtechnocratic lorms of population hasLacan comeout ofhis ghetto,but I think it is quite on the cardsthat he or
will eventually find itself' And
Por*'er still seekins itself, but Power that - aPart lrom his successorsmay one da.v manage to set up a real Psychoanalytical
still a failure in,terrns of power
ittougtl the community policy is International.
- make a lresh start What
the fi-eldof child psychiatry it could quite easily I think in future. Lacanism will come to be seenas distinct lrom Freud-
no policemen at street
could be *o.. p.if..t than a repressionwhich needs ianism.Freudianismwas defensivein its attitude to medicine,to psychiatry,
unobtrusively via one's work' one's
corners, but works permanentlYand
50 Institutional PsYchotheraPY
to the academic world. Lacanism, on the colltrary, is offensive;it is a Mary Barnes,or Oedipus in Anti-Psychiatryr
combatant theorr..In this connection,it is important to seeto what extent tt
has influencedAlthusserism,and the eflectit has had on structuralismas a
whole, especiallybecauseofits conceptofthe siglifier. Structuralismwould
certainl;' never have existed' in the form in which we know it, without
Lacanisrn. The polr,er and the a|nost religious authority of structuralism
would not have been possible but for the Lacanians' introduction of a
mathematico-linguisticconceptof the unconsciousthat tends essentiallyto
divide desirelrom realit!. To believethat desirecan only be based(symboli-
cally) on its orvn impotence,its own castration,implies a completeset of
political and micro-politicalassumptions. In r965, a community of some twenty peoplewas formed around Ronald
Laing. They establishedthemselvesin Kingsley Hall, an old building in a
beenset up - Lacanism?
1.-3.n.:So, accordingto vou, a new institurionhas London suburb that had, to quote Joseph Berke, 'a long and honourable
E.c,: Yes. A testing-ground,an advance technolog.v, the prototype of new historvasa centrelor socialexperimentand radicalpoliticalactivity'.For five
lorms of power.I t is rvonderful to succeedin totally subjectinganotherperson, years the pioneers of anti-ps,vchiatryand patients making 'a career' as
to hold hirn bound hand and foot, financialh" emotionally,without even schizophrenicswere to explore together the world ol madness.Not the
having the trorrble of making anv attempt at suggestion,interpretationor madnessof the mental hospital,but the madnesseachof us has within us, a
uppur.n, domirtation.The psychoanalvstof today doesn'tsay a word to his madness'"vhichwas to be liberated in order tc remove inhibitions and
paiient, Sucha systemofchannellingthe iibido has beenachievedthat silence svmptomsof all kinds.At Kingsley Hall thei,abolished,or tried to abolish,all
one is remindedolthoseideal lorms of teachingin which
is all that is neecled. divisionof rolesamong patients,psychiatrists,nursesand so on. No one had
the m;rsterno longer had to sav anything, but merely to move his head (the an,vofficial right to give or receiveorders or to lay down any rules. Kingsley
Latin nutus,,anod" was enough* and he then becamea numen, a divinity who Hall rvas to become an enclave of lreedom lrom the prevailing normality, a
nodded to indicateapprobation). b a s el o r t h e c o u n t e r - c u l t u rm
e ovement.2
The aim of rhe anri-psychiatristsis to get beyond the experimentsin
didn't talk of Lacan so much, but of Freud- and in
1,-1.e.:In Anti-Oedipus,l'ou community psychiatry; in their view these were so many more relormist
dusting offhis statueyou left very little of it standing. projects,and did not really questionthe repressiveinstitutionsand tradition-
r.c.: That was not deliberatel we advanced by stagesand gradual re' al lrameworkof psychiatry.MaxwellJonesand David Cooper,3whoweretwo
touching, but ol course,as the re-touchingproceeded,the inevitable hap- ofthe principal instigatorsoftheseendeavours,were to take an activepart in
pened.Br-rtour objectionsto Freud in Anti-Oedipur \\rerever)'much bound up the life of Kingsley Hall. Anti-psl,chiatrycould rhus have its own tabularasa,
w i t h o u r o b j e c t i o n st o L a c a n i s t n so to say, its organlessbody, in which every part ofthe house- cellar, rool,
kitchen,staircase,quiet room - and everyepisodein the collectivelife would
ts not this nervlorm of power)'oti
1.-1.n.:But what vou object to in ;1nti-Oedipus function as a cog in a great machine, drawing each person beyond his
seein l-acanism,but oedipus itselt,the very foundationof Freudianism..{nd immediateself and his own little problems,either towardshelpingeveryone
when the foundationscrumble, we all know what happens' else,or towards a descentinto himselfby a (sometimesdizzying) processof
You rvouldsa),that we are witnessingan inverseevolution:the psychiatric regression.
institution is rveakening,while the psychoanalyticinstitution is gaining This enclave of freedom, Kingsley Hall, was besiegedon all sides,the old
strengthin a new lorm ofPower. world oozing in at every crack: the neighboursprotestedabout the noiseat
is that psvchiatrydoesnot \\,ork,whcreaspsvchoanalvsis
r.c.:The differer1ce night. local kids threw stonesat the windows,the relativeswere readv at the
works wonderfully.So wonderfullvthat it might evensucceedin resurrecting
t. Le Noutel Obsentateur,zB N{ay r 973.
sornesectorso{'psychiatryone oftheseda1'sl z. Cf . counter'c'ultun:Tlv crealiondan A lrcrruriue ed..J. Berke , pere' owen and Fire Books,
socier-y,
r9 7 0 .
3. David Cooper, PychiatryandAntipttilatry, Tavistock, I 967.
ffi-ar.
Money in the Analytic Exchange' researchlaboratoriesas well. One can hardly imagine unskiiied workers
having to pay the designerswho plan rvhatthey producelBut ofcoursethis is
all part ofthe systemofextractingthe surplus-value.When the psychoanalyst
is paid, he is in fact reproducing a certain processolcrushing the patient to
adapt him onto the personological polesofcapitalistsociety.How could it be
otherwisewhen a psychoanalystseespatientswhose position in the family
structurepreventstheir having any personalrole in the flux ofmoney - what
Alain Cotta describesas the rotation of 'family capital'2- or directly taking
part in the clcle of capitalist production (wives,for instance,who gointo
Money lunctionsas a misleadingequivalent,in the sensethat the value that it analysiswhich their husbands pay for, or chi.ldren)?Unless there is some
representsor crystallizesdependson the positionone occupiesin the produc- svstemoffunding out oftaxes and contributions,or an allorvancepaid by
tion system.To thosewielding power in a systembasedon the extractionof a somethird bod,v,their analyticalproduction- which shouldin fact be classed
surplus-valuemoney meanssomethingquite diflerentfrom what it meansto as a u,ork ofeducation (in the widest sense)ofthe collectiveIabour force- is
thosesellingtheir labour. It crystallizesboth a way of organizingexploitation exploitedproduction. In the analyticalrelationship,the structuresofsocial
and a svstemfor disguisingthe classstruggle.I t determinesnot only people's alienation within the lamilv are transposedand reproduced:the lamily is
structuralpositionsu'ithin production,but alsothe natureofthe productions usedas stagingpost. In as much as rhe psychoanalystfinds himselfhavingto
encodedin the system. be paid in this way, he is implicitly sanctioninga way of usingthe structuresof
The contentofthe capitalistencodinghas changedas and when there has the lamily as an instrument to crush desireproduction and pressit into the
beena reduction ofprofit leveisin a whole seriesofsectorsolproduction. The serrice ola socialorder governedby profit.
State has been forced to take over from private capitalism, in the system of On the specificallyanalytic level,it seemsto me vital to recognizethat the
national insuranceand pensions,for instance,in taking over directly the child who draws or makesa plasticinemodel lor an analyst,and the wife who
'solve
controlof public serwices, or in fieldswhere the preservationof a minimum of enters analvsis to the family's problems', are taking part in sociai
socialorder requiressuch institutionsas socialsecurity,a health service,etc. production. At the unconsciouslevel, therefore,the capitalistextractionof
It is preciselythose productions that are not srictly part of the bi-polar sulplus-value is reproduced, and in a sense,expanded, in the analytic
relation of exploitation that becomein a sensedevalued,It goes without relationship.The claim of analysisto representa meansof gettingat the ruth
saying,for example,that the work that goesinto producingraw materialsor shouldoblige it, first and foremost,ro denounceitself,for by the fact ofbeing
manufactured goods in an under-developedcountry is diflerent from the paid for, it startsolla renewalofsocial violence.
equivalentwork in a rich area.The samegoesfor the work in key sectorsol At the very least,ifthey carry on as they are, analystsshould be made to
capitalist production as compared with work in slower sectors(like coal stopjustifyingtheir money relationshipwith their patienrson rhe groundsof
mining) or, worse still, work viewed as totally worthless(thejobs that give somesupposed'svmbolicorder'. Or elsethey should acceptthe logic of their
mental patientsor prisonerssomethingto do). positionand stateclearly that, lor them, order itselfis the rightful basisof all
We have tlrerefore to estimate what money represents in the analytic systemsof segregation.In most cases.of course,they are unrvillingto go so
exchange - or, rather, pseudo-exchange,for there is no real exchange of far. Like any other capitalist,they believethat earning money is part of the
services between analyst and analysand. There are two sorts of work in- normal order of things:'One has to earn a livingl'And, from an analyticpoint
volved: the anall,ticalwork of the patient, and the psychoanalvst's work of of view, this mav ultimately be the least dangerous, becausethe least
listening and sifting. It is actually quite wrong for there to be an,vffow of mvstifving,attitude.
money from one to the other. In a diflerent social systemwhich viewed these
two sortsof work in the sameway as any other form of production, the analyst
and the analysand should both be paid, just as the social division of labour
dictates that not only should factory work be paid, but work in ofEcesand
r . In tervention at the Congressofthe Paris Freudian School heid in Aix-en-Provence,May I q7 r .
Published in Leltresdt I'6colefreudieane,q. z. AIain Cotra, Thioie ginir ale du capital, dela craksanu et det
futuatilu, Dunod, r 966
Psychoanalysis
and the StrugglesofDesire 63
Psychoanalysisand the Strugglesof Desirei It is surely absurd to hope to overthrow the power ofthe bourgeoisie
by
replacingit with a structure that reconstitutes-thefomt of that piver. The
classstrugglein Russia,china and ersewherehas demonstratei
that, e'en
after the power ofthe bourgeoisiehas been broken, the form ofthat power
can
be reproducedin the state, in the family, evenin ihe ranks or rhe revorution.
How can we prevenr centrarizing and bureaucratic aurhoriry from
taking
charge of the coordination that is necessarilyinvor'ed in'organizing
a
revolutionary war? The struggle as a whole must include stageslnd
int"er_
mediaries..A,tthe 'microscopic'revel,what must happen,first Jf ail, is a
kind
The problem facins the workers' revolutionarymovementis that there is a of direct changeoverto communism, rhe abolition of bourgeois po*e,
dislocationbetweenthe apparent relationsofpower at the level ofthe class in the sensethat that power is embodiedin the bureaucrat,the leader
or the
struggleand the real desireinvestmentof the massof the people. m i l i t a n td e d i c a t e dr e v o l u t i o n a r r ' .
Capitalism exploitsthe labour capacityof the working classand manipu- Bureaucraticcentralismhas teen introducedpermanentryinto the
work-
latesthe relationsof production to its own advantage,but it also insinuates ers' movement in imitation of the centralist model of capitar.
capitar
itself into the desire systemofthose it exploits.The revolutionarystruggle supen'isesand o'er'encodes production by controlling the flowof money
and
cannot therelbre be restricted simpiv to the level oftbe apparent
state ofpower wieiding coercivepolver over production relationsand in State
monooolv
relations. It must extend to every level of the desiring economv that is capitalism.There is a similar problem with bureaucraticsocialism.
But real
contaminated bv capitalism (the individual, the couple, the family, the productiondoesnot need this kind ofdirection in the least- in
fact is better
schr-,ol,the militant group, madness,prisons,homosexualityor rvhatever). without. The major productivemachinesin indus*iar societies could manase
The objectsand methodsof the strugglewill vary from onelevelto another. very well without such centralism. Clearly, a different concepr
of how
Sr"rchaims as 'Freedorn,Peaceand Plenty'dernand political organizations productionis related boch to distribution and consumprion,and
to training
that can intervenein the power struggle,that combineforcesand constitute and research,would shatter the hierarchical and despoiicpowers
that p.euaii
blocs. In the nature of thines theseorganizationsmust be representative, within present-davproduction relations,and give i... piuy to
the workers'
coordinatingthe struggleand providing it with a strategvand tactics.On the capacitv for innovation. Evidently, then, the basis of centralism
is not
'rnicroscopiclascism'- economicbut political. In the workers' movement,too, centrarism
other hand, the struegleagainstwhat we mav call the leads to
fascisrnimplanted within desiring machines- cannot be carried on 'u'ia the same sort of sterility. It must be acceptedthat lar more elrective
and
delegatesor representatives. bv identifiableand unchangingblocs.The face broader struggles could be coordinated a.r.",ayfrom bureaucratic
head-
ol' the enemy is changing all the time: it can be a tiiend, a colleague,a quarrers,but only ifthe desiring economyofthe workers can
be freed from
evenoneself.There is nevera time when you can be sureyou are not
sr-rperior, the contaminationof the bourgeoissubjectivitythat makesthem
the uncon-
going to fall for a politics supporting bureaucracy or privilege, into a sclousaccomplicesof the capitalist technocracyand the bureaucracy
of the
paranoiac vieu' of the world, an unconsciouscollusionwith the establish- workerstmovement.
ment, an internalizationof socialrepression. Here we must be careful not to rail into the simplistic trap of saying
'democratic' either
These two strugglesneednot be mutually exclusir,e: centralism,or anarchismand spontaneism.
- The classstn.rgsle,the revolutionarystrugglelor liberation,involvesthe Alternative marginal movemenrs and communities have absolutelv
existenceofwar machinescapableo1'standingup to the forcesofoppression, nothin-gto gain by falling into the myth of a return to the pre-technologici
rvhich meansoperatingwith a degreeof centralism,with at leasta minimum age,of'back to nature'; on the contrary, they have to copewith .eal
so.l.ty,
of coordination; real sexual and family relationships, with what is happening
no*. On ti,.
- The strugg.ie
in relationto desirerequirescollectiveagenciesto producea otherhand. one must recognizethat the officialworkers'movement
has up to
continualiy ongoing analysis,and the subversionol eterltformofpower,at every now relused to consider how far it mav be contaminated by bourgeois
power,
level. to consider its own internal corruption. Nor is there at present
any scientific
t . Tal k eiven a t the fi rst Psrchoanalysisand Politics Conlerence,held in Ni ilan on 7-9 Mav r 973
discipline that can help it to do so. Neither sociorogy,nor psycho-sociology,
a n d p u b l i s h e db y F e l t r i n e l l ia n d b y F d i t i o n s r o / r 8 , nor psychology- still lesspsvchoanalysis- has extlendedMarxism
into this
64 Institutional PsYchotheraPY Psychoanalysisand the StrugglesofDesire 65
nornrs abstract relation between individuals. No group, no class is made up of
area.Freuclianism,in the guiseola science,setsup as its unquestioned
bourgeois subjectivation- the myth of a individuals; it is the imprint of capitalistproduction relationson rhe social
the verv things rhat prodr..
a signifving dimensionof desirethat producesthe streamof undifrerentiatedindividuars
n...uru,-u castiatio,,oidesire, in terms of the Oedipal triangle'
necessaryin order to inveigle a work force.
interpretatiorlwhichtendstoisolatetheanaiysis|romtherealitiesofitssocial
Did the eventsolMay r 968 in Franceinrroducea potenrialchangeinto the
settlng.
""J'uiua.a
to the possibility of abolishing the technocratic centralism of revolutionary movement,specificallyon this point of the desir.ingeconomy?
which rvould be based on a different understanding of Had such a change taken place,it would have had considerablepoliticaland
capitaiistproduction,
the relatir.rnship betweenproduction, distribution and consumptionon the social consequencesl One can only say that, since the relative decline of
This would
one hanclatrclproduction, researchand educationon the other' Stalinism,since the departure of a significantproportion of young workers
the
obviousil,tenclto nrakea total changein attitudesto rvork,and especiallv and studentslrom the traditional revolutionarymodels,we have witnessed
split betu,eeu rvork recognizecl as socially uselul (recognized as socialh'useful not a major break but little breakthroughsof desire,little breachesin the
o f d e s i r eA . ll despoticsystemthat prevailsin politicalorgarrizations.
b y c a p i t a l i s mt,h a t i s , b i ' t h e r u l i n g c l a s s )a n d t h e ' u s e l e s s ' r v o r k
of p.oductic,,t,whether ol commercialvalue or use value, llherher
of indi- The depredationsof N{ay '68 in Francewere repairedwithin a few weeks.
bodies, is under the controi ofa lorm ofsocial organiz- Perhaps no more than two. Nevertheless, it had the most profound conse-
viduals cir coliective
disappear-
ation rhat enlbrcesa cerrainpatternofsocialdivisionoflabour.The quences,and they are slill being felt at all sorts of levels.Even though its
ance ol capitalisr centralism rvould thereforebring ivith it a fundamental resultsare no longervisibleon a nationalscale,it is still goingon by a kind of
re-castinqof production techniclucs. E'"en in a societv rvith highiv developed infiltration in many differentsituations.A nervvision has beenborn, a nerv
d e i e l u p c d p u b l i c i n f o r n r a t i o ns e r v i e
t s e t c . . o r ) e c a r . approach to problemsof revolution.Before'68, for instance,it would have
i n d u s L r ; a r r c lh i g h l v
ot'diflbrent production relations that wotrld not be antagonlstlc to been unthinkable to suggestthat there could be any political purpose in
concen'e
is
the productionsof desire,of art, of dreams ln other words, the question campaigningin lavour of common criminals in prison; it would have been
as
nuheihe.or not it is possibleto stop seeinguse value and exchangevalue unthinkablefor homosexu'als to demonstratein the streetsin defenceof their
mutually opposeci. ihe aiternative of rejecting all complex forms olprodr-rc- particular orientation of desire.The women'sliberationmovemenr,the fight
tion and clenrancling a return to ntlture merei;'reproducesthe split between againstrepressionin psychiatry,theseand other movementshave acquired
of
the difl'erenttorm, of production - desiring production and production completelynervmeaningand methods.Thus it is true that problemsare now
rect gnizcd s<-,cial utilitl . seen diflerently, but, equally, there has been no real break. This is un-
x doubted.lybecausethere is no large-scalemachine for revolutionary war. We
the rvay
Relationsamong individuals,groups and classesare bound up "vith have to recognize that certain dominant images are still perpetrating their
individualsare manipulatedby the capitalistsystem-Individuals as such are destructivee{rectse'en within revolutionarygroupsthemselves. A critique of
manufacturedbv that sr-stemto satisf) the demandsof its mode of produc- bureaucratismin the trade unions has been begun; the principle of the
'delegation
tion. The idea that rherewere originally,as the basisof society.individuals, of power' to the vanguard, and the system of a ,drive belt'
groupSofiridir,idtra,lsinthe|ornro||amiliesandsoonwasthoughtup|orthe connecting the people to rhe part)', rhesethings have been brought into
that has
i..a, oL the capitalist sysrenl.In the human sciences,everything question.But revolutionariesare still the victims of a great many of the
serves
beenbuih up aiound the individual and the primacy ofthe individual prejudicesofbourgeoismoralitv, and ofrepressiveattitudestowardsdesire.
only to extend the dichotomy between rhe individual and his social context. This may perhapsexplain the lact that in May '68 therewasno suchattackon
The ciilhcultvone comesup against,the moment one tries to grapple rvith an1' psychoanalysis as there was on psychiatry. Psychoanalysispreservedsome
any real
sociairealitrl- be it language, madnessor anything connectedr.r'ith authorityin so lar as a number of the dogmasof psychoanalysis weretakenon
processo1'ciesiring
'Ir. production- is that one is neverdealingwith individuals boardby the movement
u. *u.h as linguistics,for instance,has beensatisfiedto defineits field irr *
termsof communicationamong individuals,it has totalll,missedthe coerciye The real breakthrough will only happen once there is a new approach to such
and integrativefunctionsoflanguage.Linguisticsonlv startsto liee itselffrom problemsas the bureaucratismof organizations,the repressiveattitude of
bourgeois ideoi'g.v when it studies tlie problems arising from connotation, revolutionary men towards their wives and children and their lailure to
context.the implicit and all the transactionsof languagethat lall outsidethis understandthe significanceoffatigue, neurosisand delusion (it is quite usual
Psychoanalysisand the StrugglesofDesire 67
66 Institutional PsYchotheraPY
'breaksdown' to be dismissedas 'finished"asof no more use lull-time revolutionaryor a doctor,activitv in one'slamilv, one'smarriageor
lor someole who
-once suchproblernsare)not any other situation.
to the organizationifnot a positivedangerto it)
o|their political Concerns) but at leasttreatedwith It is perhaps conceivable,if circumstanceswere different, that we could
pe,hupsut the very centre
as organizational problems, or the stand that must be start talking seriousl,vofthe relation betweena politics ofdesire and a politics
the same scriousness
powerr or management,or the police The battle is ofrevolution,but only ifwe werepreparedto be totally honest,and ifneed be,
rrracleagainstbor-rrgeois
our own ranks, against our otvn internal tread on somepeople'stoes.
one tha; Intlst be fought within
a secorldary front, as certain Nlaoists have contended'a A number ofpeople have intervenedduring thesediscussions to stressthe
police.It is notjust
a dichot- view that the principal dilemma facing us in our particular field is that
srppo.ting action.'amarginal operatiorl'As long as there remains 'alternativepsychiatry' and a psychiatric
battle on the front ofdesire. betweena (reformist) politics of
o-y.b.,.u..n the battle on the classlront and the '68, most
be possible. Significantly, after \{a,v politics that is revolutionaryfrom the word go. This would mean that there
all ibrms o1'.r-optionrvill still
n'eaklink that were t$'o camps: on the one side would be Jervis2 and on the other such
revolutionar.vmovementslailed to graspthe importanceof the
experiences as the SPK.'
had becomeapparentduring the studentstruggle Quite suddenly'students
,lorgot' the respectthat wasdue to the superiorknowledge But the problem is not really so simple.The conflict that lacesus in trving
and young u,oikers
from the old to contemplatea politics of desirecannot be restrictedto a singlefront; it is
und po*J, oiteachers,io..*.n, managers.etc They brokeaway
to the values of the past and introduced an entirely new approach'
submissic.rn
But the u,holething was labeliedspontaneism,in orher u'ords a transitional c, G. J ervis is an l talian psychiarist, author ofa cri tical handbook on psvchiatry'
'superior'phase,marked b1'the
manifestationthat must be left bel'rindfor a 3. A socialist patients' collective in Heidelberg. The SPK was made up oftherapeutic groups
the people;it
setting-Lrpofcentralistorganizations.Desiresurgedup among comprising some lorty patients at the Polyclinic ofHeidelberg University. These patients,and their
that
*,u, n[,.i, but expectedto quietenand acceptdiscipline No one realized
doctor. Dr Huber, carried out a thtoretical and practical critique ofthe institution, and discloscd
from all further the ideoiogical function ofpslchiatry as an instrument ofoppression. Their work soon attmcted
this new form of revolt would in future be inseparable 'a
increasing opposition from rhe psychiatric cl i nic - i ts di rector d escribed the group as collective of
economicand political struggles' hatred and aggression'.
As repressionintensified,so did resistance.It becameimpossible to get rid ofthe SPK by o{ficial
way in
when I tark o['x{arxismand Freudianlr*. I huu. in mind a particular and iegal means. I n a secretsession,the Univcnity Senatedecided to call in the police.They found a
From one point olview, pretext inJ ul,v r 97 r , when there was an exchangeofgunfire in the subu rbs of Heidelberg.This was
rvhich the texts oflv{arx and Freud are treated.
biamedon the S P K, which could then be put down in the most brutal way. Three hundred copswith
all its
Freudianisrr must be defined as reactionaryin all its socialstar-rces, suImachine guns lorced their way into the SPK premiscs, helicopters flew over the city, thc
of relations between the individual and the lamily' while even
analyses Bundesgrenqschut7 (special brigades) were nrobilized, searcheswere made with no wanant, Dr
problems
Marxism remains generally inadequate in its treatment of the Huber's children taken as hostages,parients and doctors were arrested, and the accused were
drugged ro make them appear cooperative.The SPK thereupon decided to disband.
relatedtodesire.Thisdoesnotmeanjhowever,th:rtthereisnomoretobe
Dr Huber and his wife spent some years in prison, in an almost total isolation which even ajudge
said about rhe textsofFreud and i\{arx' describedas inhuman, By treating them first as insane and then as terrorists (becauseof their
T h e q u e s r i o n i s j u s t i v h a t u s e t o m a k e o | t h e m . A s w i t h e v e r v t h e o r y , t h e r e raponse to police provocation they were compared with the Baader-Meinhofgroup), they could be
as a meansof
are two;ays in which they could be used The text can be used brought beforea special tribunal opemting on Nazi principles.
real social connections, the links betweenone The defencewas paralysed. One ofthe lar.yers, Eberhardt Becker, was accusedofcomplicity,
identifying and illumir.rating
the next; or the theory can be used in such a wa-v as to tailor and charged. -Another,Jorg Lang, was imprisoned. All the lawy'erswho supportcd them were
.r.rggi. and harassedand removed by one means or another. Lawyers were appointed who only saw the
r e a l i t yt o f i t t h e t e x t documentsin the casea lorrnight before it opened,wherero the press had had them from the fint.
People are often verv dogmatic r.r'hen they try to explain the relation-ship The accused rejected their serviccs.
way out of this
betw"en lr{arxism and Freudianism.I believethat the only On 7 November r g7z, the day the trial opened in Karlsruhe, the three accusedwere brought in on
sretchers (two between the threeofthem), tied hand and foot. The Hubers, who had not seenone
blindalle-vliesintalkingashonestl.vaspossibleabouttherealityofthe
anotherlor fifteen months, were bullied and violently separated,and finally expelledfrom the court,
conflicts- but they must be e{Iectiveconflicts' alongwith Hausner, the third defendant. Halfofthose prment werc plain-clothespolicemen.Part of
AslongaSwepreserveacleardir,iding.linebetw.eenprivateli|eand.public the rest wcre also expelledafter one young man read out a statemcnt ofinternational solidaritv wi th
and ciass
life, we ihull g.t nowhere. To clariiy political commitmenrs theaccuscd.He, even beforc he had got outside the court building, was anested, abused,beaten up
*ithout merely burying oneselfin a massof words' requires and left without medical attention for hours, A medical certificatelater issuedbv Karlsruhe hosoital
commitments,
describedseveredamage, some to the skull.
discussionattheler,elofone'sday-to-dayactir,'ity,beittheactivityofa
68 Institutional PsychotheraPY Psychoanalysisand the StrugglesofDesire 69
not iust a rnatterof capitalismversusthe working class.I believethat a mass the political action undertaken in the effort remains tied to traditional
ofnew fronts will have to be openedas the working classand the organiza- repressir.'e
attitudes to madnessand desire.
tions of the workers, movement become contaminated by the subjectivity of
'going out to the workers' and quoting Could psychoanalysisbecome a force lor progress, could it develop into a
the ruling class.It needsmore than 'people'spsychoanalysis'?
{iorn the right authors to rid oneselfofbourgeois influencein the sphereof It bearsthe stamp ofthe psychoanalysr's training
desire.In this sense,one cannot (asJervishas) identify the statedinterestsof as a privileged casteas much as it ever did. The essenceofpsychoanalysisis
the u,orkerswith their desire. The interestsof the Americanworking class,lor still that it is a taughtdiscipline,initiation into the psychoanalyticcasre.Even
instance,may be objectivelyfascistin tendencylrom the point ofview ofthe if a psychoanalystwants to behavelike'ordinary people',he is still a member
politicsof desire.T!e unions'fight to defendthe workers'interests,legitimate of that caste; even if he is not preaching his concept of the proper relation
though it be, can alsobe totally repressivein relation to the desire6fa whole betweendesireand society,he is still re-enacringrhe samerepressive politics
seriesofother socialgroups,ethnicand sexualminorities,and soon. I belieye, in his practice.The problem, therefore,is not that his ideasare more or less
lcrr exampie, that u'e must not delude ourselvesas to the possibility of a wrong, but that his whole way ofworking reproducesthe essenceofbourgeois
politicalalliancebetweenthe psychoanalyticvanguardu'ho claim to havegot subjectivity.A man who sits on his chair listening to what you say, but
rid 6f psychiatricrepression,and the working-classorganizationsthat exist systematicallydistanceshimselflrom what it is all about, doesnot evenhave
today. The modelsofrepressionare as unpleasantamong psychoanalysts as to try to impose his ideason you: he is creating a relationship of power which
among political militants. To go among the working classis not to leavethe leadsyou to coicentrate your desiring energyoutside the social territory. Nor
hospital. is this somethingpeculiar to psychoanalysts - it is only more marked here
psychiarrichospitalbut merely'toentera differentsort of ps,vchiatric
I spentover ten yearsworking in the FrenchCommunist Party, and that too than in the other professions of socialcontrol.We find it in the teacheron his
was a kind ofpsychiatrichospital.I do not think one can go merelyby slogans rostrum,the overseerbehind his glasspartition, the army ofEcer,the cop, the
ancispeechesand written texts if one is to judge whether or not a position is psychologist with his batteriesoftests,the psychiatristin his bin, etc.,etc.All
truly revolutionaryfrom the point ofview ofdesire of them individually may well be very nice people. They may well do
The theoreticalwritings of the SPK, for instance,make exceptionalll' everything they can to help those they deal with, yet lor all their good will
dogmaticreading,vet their politicsweregenuinelyrevolutionary'What they eachis contributing in his own way to condemningindividualsto loneliness
did shows the way to rvhat might be truly neighbourhoodpolitics, an and extinguishingtheir desire.Of courseeveryattemptis madeto cushionthe
emergentpoliticsof a masskind. However,the SPK was in no sensea party repression:with modern teaching methods, for instance, they try to ensure
forrned on the basisof a programme of how to conduct the struggle.Only that no child feelsat sea in a huge class,no child is terrorized by the teacher.
during rhe struggiedid the investmentofsuccessive desiresserveto clarify the The psychoanalyst,too, tries to make his techniquegentler- and ultimately
aims and merhodsof the conflict.The SPK's politicsmightjust as easilyhave more insidious.He de-gutsand neutralizeseverythinghis patientstell him,
been those of an alternative psychiatr;'- not in the senseof anv reformist thusadministeringa kind of subjectivitydrug. And who is to blame him for
compromise,but as an alternativebasedon the realitiesof power' that?Ifwe are not going to condemn the drugs used byjunkies, why should
At present,in a very poor district of New York, the South Bronx, black ano we condemn the sort people go to psychoanalystsfor? That is not the point.
Puerto Rican groups are running a drug addiction unit in Lincoln Hospital. Everyonedoes his own thing as well as he can, and each in his own way plays
Thus a popular movementhas takenover the fight againstdrug-dependence' a supporting role as policeman - as father in the family, as male chauvinist in
This is also a lorm of alternativepolitics,sincethis mo\rementhas replaced thecouple,as child-t1'rantand so on. Nothing is gained by issuingcondemna-
rhe drug programmeof the Governor of New York State.Doctors no longer tions,by anathematizingthe behaviourof this personor thar.What mattersis
come into the unit, but remain outsideand are called upon only for profes- to prevent the workers' movement from being contaminated by the ideology
sional advice. The unit has its own police force, and the fact that the and modesofsubjectivation of bourgeoisauthority,
governmentdoesnot closeit or ban it, and indeedactuailv goesso lar as to The fact that a few people are trying to introduce 'psychoanalysisfor the
subsidizeit, is becausethe activistswho organize it are supported by the people'is not in itselfvery serious.What is serious,on the orher hand, is that
blacks and Puerto Ricans, and all the local gangs. In this case, then, an thosewho direct the workers' movement, parties, trade unions, small left
alternarivepolitics is a possibilitybecauseit is basedon real revolutionary groupuscules,are carrying on in their own way just like teachers,or
psychoanalysts - ultimately,just like policemen.Fighting lor betterpay and
conflict.But, equallv,it could be an illusion to seekto politicizepsychiatryif
Psychoanalysisand the StrugglesofDesire 7r
7o Institutional PsYchotheraPY
class are the him the potential murderer of his brother, But was it really his brother as
conditions is not the be-all and end-all. The working -pnme
desire' There is indeed a such, that particular member of his family, that he meant? Clearly, the
victims of capitalist techniquesto manipulate
problem cannot be intensitiesof desire must be linked to normally acceptedsystemsof rep-
problem of sufleringamong ihe working class,but that
kind (sport,TV' the love-livesof the resentation,but encounterslike this can lead in two directions,can express
resoluedby the use otarugrlot*natever
possibilityof a remedy' two sorts of politics. The first will use them as so many sign machines for
fu*ou., t(e Party mystiq"ue,or whatever)'The only
expressingintensitiesof everykind. The small child says,'I'm going to cut off
i s l b r t h e o r g"problem
anizationo|theworkers'movementitselftotakecontrol
mv brother's head.' And he at once switchesto a totally di{Ierentplan - he
of the whole of how to liberate desire- and to do so without any
and might perhapsdecideto go offto rhe moon with him. We then discoverthat
help from psychoanalysts,without itself becoming a psychoanall'st'
repressiveand alienating his hared for his brother is coextensivewith his love lor him.
without resortlng to any of the psychoanalyst's
But this is not really a 'discovery'at all. The hatred was not'masking' the
techniques.
Iove. It isjust that a new connectionhas produced a new possibility.The
hatred rvhen diflerently 'driven'has producedlove. The unconsciousholds
Themostcommonfeature(wherebywecarrrecognizethe.Oedipusmethod,)
can be fitted nothing that can be denied,nothing ofwhich one can say later that it caused
is a certain technique ofreductive representation. EuerLsituztton
in an apparently triangular the personto feelambivalent.It has not changedits mind, but merelypassed
into a systemofrepresentationthat is expressed
'apparently', becausesuch a systemoperateslar more along a on to somethingelse.It is thus nonsenseto say that the child is polymor-
-od.. i say
reducedto a singleterm, phouslv perverse,etc. Pulling the headoffone'sdoll, wanting to strokeone's
binar.ymoje, and indeedconstantlytendsro become'black-hole'eflect' mother's tummy - theseare not things that can properly be related to the
or to vanish altogetherin what I rvould cali a 'whole
objects'of acceptedlogic.They do not involvethe child's responsibil-
lnthebeginni-ng,awholeseriesofambiguous,ambivalentnotionsmadeit
ity as such. The repressiveanalytic attitude, founded upon 'normalized'
possible|or"Freudianismtooperatequiteunlikeamethodclosedinupon
and caused representations, will systematicallytake him at his word, and reify what he
itself.But its centraldiscoveries,all that gave utteranceto desire
lost. This is not the place to hassaid: 'He wanted to kill his brother,he desireshis mother,he meanswhat
such scandalat the time, have sincethen been
- which is in fact the history of he says.he is incestuous.'All the agentsof the story- the child, the brother
trace the history of that closing-in
its most recent structuralist develop- and the mother - will then becomefixed in the domain of representation.If
psvchoanalvsis itself, not excluding
you say to a child: 'You've brokenthe headoffyour doll - and you know quite
ments.
of the unconscious.lt well that it cost us a lot to buy it lor you!', then you are lorcing her into the
I will take one example:its attitude to the processes
not dialectical, that they no more involved systemof economicvalues,so that gradually all her objectswill be seenin
recognizedat first thatihese were
relation to the categoriesof the prevailing reality, the prevailing order. All of
,n.guiio., than they did the negationof negation..Theunconsciousis wholly
by reality then becomesimprisonedin the schemaof dualist values- good/evil,
poliriu., a machine of fluxesand i'tensities not determinedor controlled
onto it by psychoanallsis' But.by the expensive/inexpensive, rich/poor, uselul/useless and so on.
ih..,ur,..n, of representationprojected
into it The unconscious,however,despiteits rejectionofnegativityand ofall the
intermediarv of the transferince, psychoanalysishas introduced
are treated as a dualistsystemsrelatedto it, despiteits ignoranceof loveor hatred,or what is
negativeness and iack. The intensitiesof dreams,lor instance,
and interpretation, their commandedor what forbidden,is led to make its own kind of investigationof
kirid of raw material. By the technique olassociation
caught this crazy world of acceptedvalues.It dealswith the problemsas bestit can.
manifestexpressionis re-written in terms of fundamentalstructure.
- that of the manifestcontentand that It sneaksaround them. It sets up the leading characterson the domestic
between the two modes of structuring
all possible scene,the representatives of the law, like so many grimacingpuppets. But it is
o{'the later-rtcontent - desire finds its lines of escapecut offfrom
psychoanalyst's interpretation of primarily in the directionof this world of socialrepresentations that we must
connection with reality Ultimateiy the
them into the social coordinates of the oedipus obviouslv look lor the intrinsic perversionofthat system. Psychoanalvsishas
dreams consistsin fitting
is threaten. not managed to escapethis perversion of the normal world. From the very
complex. To take another example, perhaps even ciearer:a child
'Baptiste,I'm going to cut o{fyour head'' W.ho first, it sought to control desire. The unconscious always appeared to it
ing his little brother, shouting.
the real child? something bestial and dangerous. None of the successivelormulations of
iril'? Who is the speakerlWirat evidenceleadsus to say it is
Freud has ever abandoned this position.-Libidinal energ"ymust be converted
AndthesamewithBaptiste'Ifwetaketheuseo|theChristiannameaS
we make to the Manichean svstem of accepted values, it must produce normal
referring to a real child, ther"rwe make the child using it responsible:
72 Institutional Psychotherapy
alvayon its ou,n,entirelyout ofanyone'scontrol.How could the desireenergy iy. they relateto thosepor+,ergroups whoseinterestit is to seethat all praxis
of banging-one's-head-against-the-u'all be related in any wav to collective shouldbecometransferable,indefinitelytransposable in termsof an economy
engagement? It is not a matter ol'transposingor sublimatingthis activitv,but ofdecodedfluxes;essentiallyto capitalism(and in future perhapsto bureau-
cif getting it to function on a semioticregisterthat can be connectedup to cratic socialismas well?)in that it is basedon laws that establishtire eenera.l
certainother non-signif,ving systems;not of curbing the desireor changingits equivalenceand interchangeabilityof all semiotic expressions.of course
trbjects,Lrutofbroadeningthe field afjouisnnce, openingup ne\.r'possibilities, jouissance is stiil possiblein such a system, but only on conditionthat the libido
Yet it rvili be di{Iicult to fruslrate attempts !o use repressionand enforce conforms with the dominant norms. Nera,and peculiar types of perverts
adaptationunlessone can make it abundantlyclearthatjoaissrznce centredon develop within it - for instance, the bureaucraticpervert, whose curious
t h e r g n e l r r a l s l e a d st o t h e : e m p t a t i o nt o g i v e i t i t s e x t r e m ee x p r e s s i o-n i n pleasureshave been so marvellouslyexplored by Kafka. The power of the
impotenceand destruction. bureaucracykeepsgrowing like a cancerin the labric ofindustrialsocieties, to
Emergencelrom destructivenarcissisrn doesnot mean that a sLrbject has to the advantageofthe'elites' that have accessro its bene6ts.But sincethereis
go through a processof being repressedin reality or being castratedin room lor few at the top, and getting there is expensiveand needsspecial
phantasy:on the contrary, it meansachievinggreaterpotencyand neutraliz- preparation and education, the rejects of desire are innumerable. Their
ing the {brcesof alienation. It is thereforeessentiallya matter of gaining enjoymentof what capitaiismhas to o{reris reducedto a fling at rhe berting
power over the real, neverjustof manipulatingthe phantasiesor the symbols. shop on Sunday morning, and the joys of football on rhe TV on Sunday
Ferna.adDeligny doesnot repressor interpret:he helpsthe riebilitatedwith afternoon.But there are equally innumerablerejectsfrom the betting shop
whorn he lives to succeedin trying out other objectsand relationships,to and the lootball games)with the result that a whole massof peopleend up in
succeedin building up anotherworld. ps1'chiatrichospitals,homesfor the maladjusted,re-trainrngschemes,pris-
Analysisaimed at re-adjustmentdevelopsa politicsof significance; it tends ons and so on.
to reducethe horizonofdesireto the controlofthe other,to the appropriation
ofbodies and organs;it seeksto return to a Pure awarenessofthe senseofselL
Schizo-analysis,on the other hand, rejects the'will to identity', and all
signifying personologicalspecifications,especiallythose relating to the fam'
ily. It abandons strategiesof power in lavour of an organlessbody that
de-individuatesdesireand is ready to seeit expressedby way of non-semiotic
cosmic fluxes and non-signilying socio-historicfluxes.
In the traditional analytic approach, whenever one passesfrom a pre-
signifying semiotic to a signif,vingsemiotic,there is a lossofsatisfaction,a new
scopefor guilt feelings,a manifestationof the super-ego.When a child plays
'matter' involved (this is a very important
with its shit there is a certain
point). When an analytic interventiontries to transform this pleasure,this
matter, into a semiotic substancethat can be translatedand interpreted
according to the dominant code, it ends by mutilating or destroying it,
'signifyingsemioticcounterpart'that replacesthe organless
attachingit to a
body" Programming individuals, conditioning them to the idea that their
desirescan always be translated into something else, is what normative
institutionshave always spent their time doing. Far from changingthings,
psychoanall'sismerely brings an improved technology to bear on precisely
the sametype of project.
It remirinsto be seenwhat is the rationalelor this psychoanalyticpplicv of
emascr-rlating desire. Why has psychoanalysis presented itselfat this point as
a kind of s'.rbstitute religion?Whoseproblemsare they ultimatelv?Essentiai-
Towards a Micro-Politicsof Desire 83
'right'
Towards a Micro-Politics of Desire' lor ranks, lor sexual.racial and age hierarchies,for the of the ruling
classto seizethe meansof produc!.ion lrom the workersand so on.
we are neverdealingt,ith an abstractstructure,a kind
In reality, therefiore,
of ideal game of chess,a iogical mould shaping all significantcontents.All
contents,before being structured by language,or 'like a language',are
structured at a multitude of micro-politicallevels.It is preciseiythis lact
which justifies the lact that a micro-politicalrevolutionaryaction makesit
possibleto relati',,izethe'dominant significations'and to neutralizethe forms
of indication and regulationput forward bf the structuralists.Denying the
Introduction lunction of power in representationimplies a refusal to make a micro-political
commitmentwhereverit may be needed,in other rvordswhereverthere is a
Structurnlistanalysestrv to mask the basicduality betweenconrentand form
signification.
Lrl attending only to form, setting the content in parentheses,believingit
lVhat we ha.,'eto do, then, is to get rid of this great oppositionbetweenthe
lcgitimate to separate rvork relat.ingto content lrom u'ork relating to lornr.
'firis contentand the form, rvhichresultsin separatingthe two and.leavingthem in
is one wav of r:rganizirrgthe niconnaissanceof the political origins of the
some sensindependentof one another, and, on the contrary, try to find
lvav contentis lormaiized.What u,eshould be doing is to comparea political
connecringpoints,points ofmicro-politicalantagonismat everylevel.Every
genealoeyof significativecontentswith the wavs in which the speechacts of
power lormation organizesits own s.vstemof verbal packagingfor what it has
translcrrmationaland generative grammars are produced. Structuralists
to say. The expressionmachine,which extendsover all theseformations,is
seemio find no problem of semantics.Tfie semanticcomponentappearsor
thereonly to normalizelocalficrmalizations, to centralizeand rendertranslat-
d(-)es not appear at this or thatjuncture, but they take it as read, as going
able the unchanging signification recognizedby the dominant order, to
without sayine,and neverquestionit as such.
demonstratea ionsensus- what Louis Hjelmslev terms the level of the
No one is concernedto discoverthe particular lorm ofstructuring ofeach
immediatesubstance,and definesas a collectiveapperception.
tvpe r,'fcontent;the!'are by u'ay of believingrhat the problemof lormalizingit
What goeson betweencontent and lorm is the stabilizingof the relation'
onl"' a1rps315 once it is caught up in the form/content relationship,and
ships of de-territorialization.The a-signify'ingsign machine, the sl,stemof
e\rerythins to do u,ith determining the origin of that lormalism is then
figuresof expression(still using Hjelmslev'sterms), comesinto existenceat
translerredto the signifier,the chainsofsignifiers.Yet it is alw,aysa specific
the point where all signifyingsemiologiesmeet. Its role is similar to the role
politicai and social order that moulds them. There is nothing auromatic
the State plays in relation to the variousfactionsofthe bourgeoisie,that of
about the structuringofcontents:the socialsituationis not a superstructural
orderingand hierarchizingthe pretensionsofthe diflerentiocal groups.The
content rnechanicallydeterminedbv an economicinfrastructure)any more
non-signifyingexp{essionmachine (on the level of the signifier) organizesa
than the semantic territorv is mechanicallv determined by a signi$,ing
system of empty words and interchangeabilityfor all the territorialized
structure' or the various manilestationsof a primitive societv bv the
systems of words produced by the manifold local agenciesof power. (We may
elementarvstructuresol'lamilial relationships.
instancethe power of the lamily over the production of nice speech,or the
J'crtll to explain complexsocio-historical structuresin termsof a mechan-
powerof the schoolover the productionof nice writing, discipline,competi-
ism oi'exchange, or lan{uagein ternrsofa svstemoflogical transformation,or
tion, hierarchy, etc.) Thus, bv means of a non-signifvings)'stemof ex-
desirein terms of the operation ola signilyingsystemand rhe phantasiesit
generates,is to trl' to avoid questioningthe operationsofporr,erthat control pressiona moderateregime of de-territorializationbecomesstabilized,and
capturesand regulatesrelativede-territorializations of lormalisrnsofcontent.
the socialsphereat every level. It is not a matter ofproducing a universal
FranqoisJacob suggeststhat 'natural' encodingmight function in three
form:riismas such.but of the way a svstemof power comesto usethe meansol
dimensions.Todorov reckonsthat symbolicsemiologiesspecificallyinvolve
a sigiriiyingformalismto uni{i'all the variousmodesof expression, and centre
two dirnensions.Only linguistic encoding is left functioning on a linear
thernaround irs orvn 'fundamentai'values- respectlor propertv.lor persons,
svstem(and in a wav that FrangoisJacob insistsmust be carefullydistin-
i . F r o n : a c o ur s eq iv c n r o t h e s t u d e nt s a r R c e d H a l l , C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s it l , N e w Y o r k . p a r r so i - i t guishedlrom geneticencoding,which is relativelylessde-territorialized).If
h a v r S r r r r p u b l i s h c Ci t S e m i t t t c a
x tn, d i n a n i s s u eo f Q ai n I r o n o u ro f C h r i s r i a n M e t z - .N { r r . i q 7 5 . we lollorvtheseauthors,then, we ma.vbelievethat the modesof encodinggo
Towards a Micro-Politics of Desire 85
8,1 Institutional PsYchotheraPY
and di{Ierentiationin so far as onto political ground. This is becausethe social forcesthat the processof
through a kind o{'processof moiecularization capitalistproductionhas to deal with are directly concernedby the definition
strata of perce ptive
rhe], relate to lineuistic ,t*tu' tht :tp,:tj:::i:1": ":"1
imagine extending this tendency to oe- of any such systemol norms, any such model for living, any such model of
ii".g"i"i. strata. One can even desiring subjectivitv,correspondingto the sort of'normal' individual re-
semioticsof the sciences'rvhich aban-
territorializationwith the a-signifying quired by the system.In earlierages,religiousor philosophicaldisputesstood
lu"guugt by introducing sy:teTs-?f
don thc c,ne-dimensron"l;;"t'lt* oi in the samerelationshipto the field ofsocialstrugglesas psychoanalysis does
-".riete-siqn:;Inoointoffa.t,thedifferencebetweenrhesignandrnhatit
. r- .-:.^^r^--a\
for c a p n r c lto
instance) seems o s e ssome
^ llose ome ofl lits
O tS today. But the policy of psychoanalysis consistsabove all in claiming to be
sigrtifies(in theoretrcarphytic'' ofa particle- altogetheroutside the political field, to be consideredas an objectivescience.
proofofthe existence
relevance.No one toa"y ai*unds positiue It hassoughtto takeits standon varioussciences-biology,physicsand, more
as il carrbe made to fu''tction without any contradictionin the totality
so long recently,mathematicsand linguistics- but has reallysucceeded only in aping
when an extrinsic'experimentaleflect
of theoreticalsemlottcas a whole' Onlv them. Furthermore, it has never managed to get a\\,ay lrom the kind of
into oPeratloll doeshindsightquestionthe exrst-
brings the semioticsvstem sectarianismthat makes psychoanalyticsocietieslook more like corporations
woulclbe meaningless'It is onlv
enceolthe particle. U"'ii^iftt", the question
totalitv that the fighting for their own intereststhan bodiesworking for the advancementof
;;;t";.i;d e.xcludedt'v tt"'t ttttotttic-cum-experimental
a kindof charge-of negative existenceOne has science.Having failed to find any seriousscientific support, psychoanalysis
particleretroactivel,vutqui"' has retreated into a flurry of 'literary' activity which has done littie to
then no longerto givea step-b1'-step demonstrationofthe particle'sexistencc;
- - objectiveof materializing its enlightenanyoneas to what it actuallvdoes.
one has given up the hiiherto fundamental Freudianism,at the sametime as discoveringthe scopeof our unconscious
it in spaceand time This type of
existenceby the physicaieffectof locating investmentsof desire,selsabout dispellingtheir 'evil spells'.From the start,
in other words entities thar
ser.iotic involves ."r,at'*. .^rt particie-;igns, the sign and the psychoanalvsis ried to make sure that its categorieswere in agreementwith
and existence'Betr'veen
eludethe coordinatesof rime, space direct' but the normativemodelsof ttreperiod. It thus contributedto settingup a further
of relarionship' no longer
referent there is no* o r,.r" lvpe barrierto desire;it arrived in the nick oftime,just as crackswereappearingin
gagement'
involf ing a r.'holetheoretic-cum-experimental-en a lot ofrepressiveorganizations- the lamily, the school,psychiatryand so on,
\\rithr]on-sienilying-rernioti.rofthiskind,*e-ha"tleftthesphereof But what it did was to set up a more internal barrier which restrainedthe
the potenc'vof machinic engagement'
semiologicalpo',".rl.uir"" for that of subjectiveeconomyoldesire more closely,taking hold of it in the cradle,and
'fhe physics could equall-vbe
exarrrplef f,"t. ttg;t'ted frorn theoretical trving never to let go. There are no limits to the ambition of psychoanalytic
- social' artistic and so on'
,"orked out in other domains control; if it had its way, nothing would escapeit, since it is concerned
u" two possible politics in relationto signification'
In mv vierv,ttt.tt, titttt simultaneouslywith madness,dreams,deviationsof everykind, art, history,
i{Iect' and expectsthere{oreto find
Either one acc,pt,\t d'i'i' u'an inlvitable the primitive world, and even the most minor motions of everyday life, the
ott"ptt \t deJacto'1n the contextof a particular
it itt evervsemioriclet'ef o' on" tiniesterror or slip. All non-sensemust thus yield to its explanatorynet, must
and one proposes to cou^nter it 'n'ith a generalizedn-rtcro-
f,riiri."r systern, within' in such a way as to fit into the compassof its comprehension.Take homosexuality,lor instance:
il;t.;i .iruggrc that can undermine it lrom psychoanalysisclassesit as a pen,ersion,defining it as a fixation at an
to escape lrom the t1'rannvof the
enable all the tntenstvemultiplicities inlantile stage- a stage defined in turn as pre-genital and 'polymorphously
this means"is-unleashing a whole host of
signifying over-encoding'What of perverse',So, by the use of a supposedlyobjectivedescription,it implicitly
- children' of ichizophrenics'
expi'essions a,-,cle*periJentations thoseof sanctionsa norm, a correct genitality, a legitimate form of desire which
everykind - that all work to penetrate
no[o..*uoi., of priioners' of misfitsof automaticallydisallowsthe desireof children, homosexuals,the mad, even,
order' to feelout new escaperoutes
una .u, ir-,,othe semiologyof the dorninant whenit comesdown to it, of women,or of youngpeoplewho havenot yet fully
.onsrellations of a signifvingparticle-signs'
.r,J pr"ar.. nervand ,,L,ir.o.d-of acceptedthe marriage/familv orthodoxy.
To the extent that a revolutionary strugglemanagesto break alvay lrom the
and Semiotics dominantmodels,and especiallyfrom that model of models,capital (which
I)esire Minorities, Psychoanalysis
rviderthau that providedby consists in reducingthe multiplicitiesof desireto a singleundifferentiated flux
Psychoanall'sis has Iong enjoyedan audiencelar -of workers,consumers,etc.); to the extent that it managesto break away
-
.|o hastrieclto definea norm the bourrdarv
ils orvn adePts. tnt J*"tlt that it - it hasstrayed lroma Manicheist,black-and-whitesimplificationof the classstluggleand to
in human behaviour
betn een the normal ond th" pathological
86 Institutional Ps.vchotherapy Towards a Mioo-Politics of Desire g7
accepilhe plurality of desiringcomnrirmentsas possrblelinls benveenpeople objective,the other subjective,and replaceit with that ortwo possible
roliricr:
in revolt and the revolution; to thar exrent it will be led to take account of a poli ticsofinterpretationthar keepsgoingover and over the pastin the realm
'normirlity" and to seek
minoritiesof ;rll ki1ds, without any pre.judices about ofthe unconsciousphantasy,and a politicsofexperimentationthat takes
hold
their s1p-rport. For ther.eto be such a change,we should have frrst to identifv of the existingintensitiesof desireand forms itselfinto a desiringmechanism
and neutralizethe mocielsassumedb.vpsychoanalysis, rvith its legirimationof- in touch with hi.storicalsocial reality. Interpretation or experimentation,
fit in the dogma of Oedipus and of assumec 's.cientific'
the repressionof desire to psychoanalysis or rhe politicsofdesire?To get to the roorsofthese
"vith
t a n r p e 6 p l st o d a ya g r e er h a t n o r e v o i u t i o n a r sy t r u g g l ei s
c i . r r a r i u n .A q r . e am alternatives,we shall have to get back ro rhe origins ofpsychoanarysis
and
really possibleanv longer that doesnot a/socommit itselfto the liberationof politics as they normally appear,and try to seehow eachofthem
relaresto
desire.But \^,eare sriil unableseriouslyto contemplateopeningup neu'fronts language. lVe make our interpretations with words, whereas we
clo our
of clesire,becauseu'e are still trappedbv the classicps-ychoanalytic dilernma: exp.erimenting*'ith signs, machinic funcrions,anci engagements
of things
as far.asdesireis concerned)its porveris dangerous,destructive,incapable and people.At first sight, it would seem that the t'6,omusr remain
suite
o l a n v t h i n gc o n s t r u c t i v e : separate, How can the introduction of polirics contribute to clarifying
as lar as our egoand our societvare concerned,thereis tlreworld ofreality matters?one would have said that feelings,action, theory and machinisni
rvith whicl-r.1,1emLlStsomehou'or other come tO terms, to which one must mark offdifferent orders of things that should nol be confused:yet
it seems
submit, evenrhough later claiming that orredid so becausethat was tile onll to me to be 'itar to prevent their crystalizing into compretely
separate
w a y o f o b t a i n i n sm a s t e r ) ' o fi t , s tr at a .
Yet surel,vthc-real madnessis to be four]d,fir'stand forenrost,at the core ol !'rom this we shall have to go back still further, within the framework
o{'
the capitalistorder as sr,tcli! Surelvreasonis to [e found' first and foremost,at linguistics,and considerthe possib.iliry ora semioticthat could explain both
the core of the maddest desirel Desire is not necessaril,r' disruptir.e and the functioningofthe word as signifierand that ofscienrificsigns,technical/
a_narchic. Desire.oncefreedfr.omthe control of authoritv, can be seenas more scientific mechanismsand sociaiforces.we should then find oirselves facing
real arlrirnore realistic, a better organizer and more skilful engineer, than the a fundamentalpolitical dilemma within one and the samesemioricwhole,
a
raving rationalismttf the plannersand administratorsof the presentsvstem. whole capable of opening out into non-signifying semioticsand alrowing
for
Science,ir-rnovation, creation- thesethings prolileratefrom desire,not from the transition of rhe objective sciencesinto signifying and subjectivizing
the pscrrclo-rationalism of the technocrats. langr-rages. srudents of semioticsare already aiviaea into thosewho relati
Psvchoanalysis is no science:it is a politico-religious movementand should semiotics to the sciencesof language, and those who consider language
be treated in the same !!'av as all tlie other movementsthat have proposed merelyone among other instancesof the functioningof a generarsemiolic.'It
moclels of behaviourfor particular timesat'rdcontexts.Its conceptionof desire seemsto me that the result of this debateis that, in the first case,desire
gets
l f irs time'in appearance
i s . a h e a co o n l l I i t i s a h e a do n l l i n p c r t e c t i n gt h e boggeddorvn in the Imaginary by becoming invested in a system otsigiifi-
r.epressive support required by the logic of the system,and overhaulinga cant flights *hich I shail call paradigmatic perversion,whereas.
in' the
tecirniqueof interpretingand re-directingdesireand of internarlizing repres- second,it participatesin a-signifyingsemioticengagemen!s invorvingsignsas
siotr. Tlte object of ps)rchoanaiysis is. in brief, what I would call colLectiw well as things' individuals as well as groups, o.gun, u. well
as fori., o.
- into operatione\/erYthingthat militates machines'The politicsof the signifierlead to a signmachinemarking
I.taranoia in other lr'ords,bringing our rhe
againstan.,,liberationo1'schizo desirein the socialsituatiot'r.Belorestudying territorialized fluxes - by means of a limited collection of discrete, ,digital-
the particular',extremepositionofpsychoanalvsisacrossthe spectrumofthe ized'sisns- and retainingoniv ffuxesof inlormarionthat can be
decoded.The
variousdegreesofthat collectiveparanoia,let us first considerthis functionrn role of that sign machine is to produce, in Hjelmsrev'sterm, ,semioticalry
itselfand G. role it plavs in the socialspherein general.onll'after that shall formed substances',that is to say strata of exp;essionwhich rbrm
a connec-
u,etrr- ro identil! the specificnlechanismson which psychoanalysis rests,and tion betweenthe two domains formalized at the level ofexpressionand
that of
u,hoseiunctioning has in some sensebeen intensifred. our aim rvill be to content;for linguistic anaiysts,this operation produces
an effectofsignifi-
ciefir-re the nature ola coelncient of collective paranoia. the complementar.v cation.The totalitv of intensivereaiitv is rhen .processed'
bv the formaizing
anci inverse coellicient I posited some ten )ears ago as a'coettrcient of duo, signifier/signified;the totarity of fluxes is held in tl",e.snapshot'
o?
transversaliil.". significationwhich placesan objectfacinga subject;the movement
oidesireis
I shali encleavourhere t0 set rid of the notronof two opposin.s.realities,one sterilizedby a relationshipolrepresentation;the image becomes
the memory
BB InstitutionalPsychotherapy
Towards a Micro-Politics of Desire gg
of'a realitv made impotent, and its imrrobilization establishesthe rvorld of externalrelationto it. According to them, behaviouris mereiva ,pragmatic
of
dominant sienificationsand receivedideas. communication'iit is whollv devotedto the transmissionof inlormation,
to
T h i s o p e r a t i o no { ' c o n t r o l l i n a
g l l t h e i r r t e n s i vm
e u l t i p l i c i t i e cs o n s t i t u t e tsh e t h e c i r c u l a r i n go f s l m b o l s b e t w e e nu t r e r e ra n d r e c e i v e r a, n d t o t h e i r
feed-
fir'st act cri political violence. The relation between the sienifier and the b a c k .T h e ' s e m a n c i c p ' r e s u p p o s i t i oonf t h i s s y s t e mo f i n t e r c o n r m u n i c a t i o n s
significd(which Peirceseesas corl\'entional,Saussureas arbitrarr,)is at root restsupon the idea that the 'sender
and receiver'of the symbolstransmitted
merelv the expressionof authorit,vby meansof signs.The expressionof the has 'agreedbeforehandon their significance'.His behaviouris thus reduced
conrext,of what is implied and presupposed, in other words of all that relates to a flux of inficrmation,or at least to dependenceon that flux. But what
of
rnorc or lessclosel.vto the interactiono{'authority'andof desire,is dismissed desirein all this exchangingof information?Is a manilesrationof desirea
bl,specialistsin the human sciencesas being outsidethe termsof their studv, jamming of the transmission,a noise,or sheerderight
'offthe at a clear receptionof
subject',rather as a judge misht cail to order a witnesswho will not the nressaee?All that these researchersseem interested in is tire
wav
stick to the questionbeingasked,or a sroup of policemenwili lorciblv remove inlormation is organized syntacticaily and the pragmatic srrategy
of be'-
bystandersr'r'hoare watching them ill-treatingsomeone.The establishment haviour' l\'hen it comesto the meaning,they stop: it seemsto be something
of meanings.of rvhat is to be understood.has to remain the businessof that thev rhink goeswithout saying. It could hardly relate to anything
bul
authoritv. philosophy.syntax depends on rhe nobre scienceof mathemaiicar
iogic.
Tools of expressionare plovided tor thosewho usethernin the same',vavas Pragmatics.however,belongspurelv and simply to psychology.
spadesand picks are handed or,rtto pnsoners.The pensar"rdexercisebooks can one at least say rhar this di'ision inio three is a rereaserrom
the
given to schoolchildrenare toolsof production,and teachinqis proerammed despotismcf the signifier?No, for behaviouristcommunicationis still
deoen-
to produce onlv a certain tvpe olacceptablesignifications.There can be no denton_the mvsteryofsignification.They can only keepit at a distance,
and
escape,The first commandment of the 1211,, ol which no one must plead in lact it r.r'illahvays continue to influence every stage of behal,iour.
More
ignorance, is Lused above all on the need for evervone to realize the porverfullythan ever,in fact,lor its beingrelegatedto the statusofthe impricit
importanceof the dorrinant signi6cations. All the intensitiesof desiremust be meansthat it will trigger off an even more demanding formalism.
it.y
subject to the rule of the formalizing duo, expressionand content, as remainthe priso'ers ola supposedlyimmediateapperceptionofsignification,
elaboratedin the context of pre',,ailingproduction relations.Apart from of a signify'ingsemiologicalcogito. h is only in upp.urun.., then, rhar this
madnessand t-rtherescapesfrorn the rneaninglessness olthe sYstem.that is. neo-behaviourist schoolhas avoidedbeingboggeddown in the psvchoanaly-
ticals,vstemof signification,Indeed, one may wonder whetherihere has
not
The Signs Pervade even Physical Fluxes beena kind ofdivision oflabour among thosewho have set out to
analvse
behaviour on rhe basisof inlormation theory and thosewho ha'e decided
trt is not easv io extricate oneself from the politics of signification and to analvseits significantcontent on the basisof the oedipalist interoreta-
i n t e r p r e t a t i o nI.n t h e h u m a n s c i e n c e sa, c e r t a i nf a s h i o no f a p i n g ' s c i e n t i f i c tion,
rigour'. wirich draws attention ar.vavlrom the political issues at stake, For the former, 'behaviour'is reducedto one of two 'binary digits,,while
inevitablv leads to a concealeddependenceon those metaphvsicalpara- lor the latter it is triangulatedlone may similarly fiid oneseliwolnd.rirrn
u,
l o e i s m sa. l w a v st h e s a m e ,t h a t b e a ro n r e a i i t y - t h e s o u la n d s i g n i f i c a t i o n . theanalogousproceedingsundertakenby structuralistanthropologir,,,ut.n
f'ake. fbr instance,the researchinto communicationnow eoing on in the thevinsiston understandingprimitive societiessolelyin termsof rheir
lamilv
U n i t e d S t a t e s :w h a t i s i r b u t a n o b j e c t i v i s tt r a p , a l a l s e a l t e r n a t i v et o relationships,which they then reduce to a logic of exchange,
o. ut th"
psychoannlltic sub.jectivism? The researchersrvorking at the l\{ental Re- goings-on ofliterary sectsthat are religiouslydeJicatedto ro-.il.d readings
search Institute of Palo Alto, w,ith Gregory Bateson. exarnine on.ly the o f a ' t e x t 'b t ' i t s e l f l
'behaviour' the_vbelievecan be consideredas a 'term of communication'.'
whate'er is takenas the gauge,whetherit be the signifier,the iibido
or the
Transposirrethe subdivisionsuggestedby Carnap and Morris into syntac- matrimonialunit of excha'ge,the method is the same:what is constant
is the
tics, semanticsand pragmatics, thev end bv separating,in the name of idea that one must discover a univocal rererencepolnt, a transcendant
s e n r a n i i c rosn, ed i m e n s i o no f c o m m u n i c a t i o nw. h i l es t i l l m a i n t a i n i r rag c e r t a i n invariable,not itselfsignificative,rvherebyto explain rhe sum ofthe
sisnifi-
r . P . \ \ ' a t z l a r v i c k . . JH
. . B e a v i n .D . . l a c k s o n ,P r n g m a t i cott l l u n a n C o m m u n i t a t i o\ V
n ,. W . N o r t o n , cativearrangements, One setsout in searchof a mechanism_ no, u rnuJhina.
N c u Y o rk . r o i l : which is a very di{rerentthingr - rhat wourd fix the fluxes,determine
the
go Institutional Psychotherapy Towards a Micro-Politics of Desire gr
referencepoint, in short, without any instance of conscience.The same Semiotics with n articulations
economv,the same avoidanceof any significantflight, rvould be lound with
as that of insects,rvhich developsb,v Signiffing semioticsestablishsystemsof mediationwhich represent,neutral-
semioticsof such social c<-rmmunication
with no possibiliwof being transposed, rzeand renderimpotent all the intensivemukiplicities,by subjectingrhem to
way of a highly specializedencoding,
the_form,/substance couple.They give shapeto the substancesof expression
and without introducingany autonomouslevelof the signifier.The establish-
and the substancesof the content; they impose on intensiverealities the
ment of a non-signifyingsemiotic rnachinism,bound up with the various
regimeof the strataof double articulatio'.12That regimeshould,in my view,
processesof de-territorialization,technological,scientific,artistic, revolu-
be consideredas a specificsemiotic optionol the processes
tionary etc., also results in desroying modes of rePresentationthat are ofde-territorializa-
tion. we are lacedwith a choice:either a systemrvith ,, articulationsin rvhich
humanistic, personological,familialist, patriotic and so on' It implies a
the various .on-signifyingsemioticscombinetheir efrortswithout any one of
continual broadening out of desiring production towards the totality of
them over-encodingthe others; or a sysremofdouble articulation.doubre
a-signifyingsemiotics,and their machinic surplus-values'But this doesnot
formalization.which over-encodes all other systems.If the latter, the semio_
thereforemeana return to the mvth of a'natural'semiotic.On the contrary',it
tics beconresubjectto what one nlay call the signiiyingillusion.and all seem
means getting bevond semioticscentring upon human beingsand rrtoving
t o d e p e n do n l i n g u i s t i c s . rE3v e n t h e s e m i o t i cs t r a t ad e s c r i b e db v H i e l m s l e v
irreversiblytorvardssemioticsinvolving technologicaland theoreticalsys-
still belong to the particular mode of formalizarion proper tc.rsignifying
tems that are ever more differentiated,more artificial, and further from
'fhe semiotics.I think, however, that the tripre division he suggesrsshould bi
primitive values. problem is no longer one of trying to straddle de-
preserved,as long as it can be transposedto someexrent:
territorializedfluxes,but of getting aheadof them. There is an ever greater
flux of desires,and a more marked de-territorializationof thoseSuxes The form 3onsideredindependentlyof substance(which Hjelmsrevneverenvis-
ages).This would relateto whar I call hereabstract
capacityof human societiesto escapefrom alienationsterritorializedin the machines;
substance, or more preciselythe form/substancecouple.To the oarticular
ego,the frerson,the family, the race. the exploitationof labour,distinctionso1'
caseolthe semiologiesof signification,this wourd correspondu, u mode
sex and so on dependson a conjunctionbetweenthe semioticsofconscious- of
actualizatiorr,manifestation,possession of the cle-territorlalizing
nessand thoseof de-telritorializingmachinisms.Human beingsmake love potencyof
'extra-human'elements- things,animals,images, abstractnrachinesrvhenthey becomesubjectro the s)'stemofstratification
with signsand alI kinds of of
looks, machines and so on - that the sexual functioning of Primates,for expressionand contentbasedon the principleofdouble articulation;
malter,consideredindependentl;- of its signifyingsernioticformation (rhisis
instance,had never encoded.With its shift to non-signiffing semiotics,the
not envisagedbv Hjelmslev,either,lor in his way of thinking it would implv
subjectivity of the utterance comes to be invested in an organlessbodv
connected to a niuitiplicity of desiring intensities.That organlessbod;" leavingrhesemiotic sphere).It would rhenstandas a corresponde nt to *,hat i
call the machinicmeaning.In the contextof a semioticof the machinicsense,
oscillatesbetweenan anti-productionthat tendsto becomere-territorialized
rather than of the signification,of material intensitiesrather than of the
in residuaisignifications,and a serniotichyper'productionthat opensitselfto
signifieras a categoryin itself,ofcollectiveapparatusofutterancerather than
fresh machinic connections.The collective apparatus of utterance can thus
an individuation of the subjectbasedon the primacy or the statemenr,what
become thi: centre of immanence for new desiring connections, the point
would vanish would be the very distinctionbetweencontentand exDression.
where, beyond humanity, there is production and jouissance by the cosmic
This may be the way in which we are to undersrandHjelmslev,s(or his
fluxesthat run through machinismsof every kind. Let me stressagain that
translators'?) intuition in idenrifyingmarter and meaning.
this in no sensemeansthat what is utteredhas to return to the'pre-signif,ving'
In the specificcaseof double articurarionsignifvingmachines,we are in
mechanismsof natural encoding,or that it is condemnedto bejust a single a
cog in an alienating social machinery. I am certainlv not going to join the t r . c i c h r i s r i a n I I e r z ' s a n a l y s i s ,w i r h r e f e r e n c et o H j e l n r s l e v ' sp r o l e g o m i n e s . . , L e r
us rerurn ro
vrailing chorus of humanists who lament the loss of real values,and the chapter r 3 o[the Prolegomines, r'here it savs rhat rorm is a pure nerwork o[rc]ationships, thar marter
'orientalized'
essentialu'ickednessofindustria! societies,e'r'rl2s thev have t h c r ec h r i s t c n e d" s e n s e " ) r e p r c s e n t st h e i n i t i a l l y a m o r p h o u se n r i r y i n w h i c h l o r m i s i n s c r i t r e , l
and
their rhythms to suit the styleof the'new culture'. "manilested"a . n d t h a r t h e s u b s t a n c ei s w h a r a p p e a r sw h e n o n e p r o j c c r sl o r m o n t o m a r t e r , , a s
a ner
t h a ti s s t r e r c h e do u t p r o j e c t si r s s h a d o wo n t o a n u n b r o k e ns u r f a c e "( p . gr T h i s m c r a p h o r
). s e e m sr o
m ea \ / e r yc l e a r o n e : t h e " u n b r o k e n s u r f a c e "i s t h e m a r t e r , t h e " o u t s t r e t c h e dn e t ' , i s t h e f o r m ,
and
thr"shadorv"olthenerisrhesubstance.'(Metz,Langageetcin[ma,Larousse,rgTr.)
I q . C f . B e n v 6 n i s t e , S e m i o t i tc9a6, 9 , r . z , M o u t o n .
roo Institutional Psychotherapy Torvardsa Micro-poliricsof Desire ror
scnsesub!ecterlto a controlledCe-territorialization. The anti-productionof 3. At this point of departure, the conjunctiue s,ntheses define the srarus of
significationand sLrbjectivation partiall,vre-territorializesthe semioticpro- subjecti'ation' In the case of signifving se*iologi.s,
subjectivarion is
cess.Ii is not a questionofradical neutralization,ho*'ever:the semioticsof individuated, split up by the signifie., re,ide.ed
impotent; the subject be-
significationalsoimplv settingon loot a de-territorialization of consciousness comessimply somerhingalongsidethe.signilyingsubstances.
All poivuocity
rvl'richr,vill continue to plav a leading role in the most adr.'anced,most of u tteranceis alienatedto a,ranscenden"talized;
subject of the utterance.
artificial,moslnodern, most scientificmachinic conjunctions-In the caseof In the case of non-signifying semiotics, there
is a collectiverorce o'
a politicri o1'nr:-rn-signifying senriotics'with n number of articulations)one urterancethat effectsthe split inherent i'ajl systems
of representation. The
wiil tirus preservea certain partiai use lor signifyingsemiologies. Thel'will sen.re of the abstracr machines connectsup with rhe
sensi of the collective
rhen function in :pite of their re-territorializingeffectsof significationand apparar.sesofutterance,^bothprior ro and beyond
'fhey the exclusivedisjunctive
subjecti'.'ation. u'ill rnerely lose their function of over-encodingthe signi6cationsolthe signifyingsemiorogies with their errectof individu"tino
systemsof'sernioticproduction that used to lall under the despoti.sm of the subjecti'ity. Thus the collectiveappararuses
of utrerance^"d ;-J;.;i;;
signifier. effecta co'junction betu'eenthe abstiact machines
on the one hand, a'd on
In di.stirreuisiring. as I am trying to, twci semiotic politics, I u,ant to the orher the machinesthar are a*ua.lized in
the fluxes of reality and the
deterrnineurrder what conditionscertain semioticareas- in sciences,arts, lluxes ol'a-signifling signs. The specific effect
of the annihilati"g J;-
revolution, sexuality, etc. - could be removed from the control of the t e r r i r o r i a l i z a t i oonf t h e i n s t a n c eo f c o n s c i e n c e
b e c o m e sl n s o m es e n s ei s o -
Cominant representations, could get beyondthe svstemofrepresentationas iated from subjectivizing significations. A
machine of intensive de-
such -- since that s),stemseparatesdesiringproduction from production ibr terrrroria,izationis a gatewayfor the flux of signs,
and gi'es them new power
exchange,and alierratesit as prevailingproductionrelationsdemand. bv liberating them from representationa.r cleadenclsancl i'volving th.- i,,
Lct us look asain at the three tvpesofsynthesiswe usedin order to identifv processes of diagramrnaticconjunction.To transposeit inro
rhe te;irr;io;y
and articulateproduction and representation: used b' Andr6 Martinet. the problem can be
stated like this: the .,.ron..n?.
r " At the lev,:l of connecliue ,)nlheses,what is set going by the processesof srructuredon the level ofthe first articulationand
the phonemesstructurei
uon-scmioticencodingis tl-reabstractmachines- that is, machinicprocesses on the le'el ofthe secondarticurationare not in
'doing' 'thinking', essencediirbrent.Both are
indepenCent of dichotomies between and between g e n e r a t e d*,o m o u t o f t h e s a m ec o n l i n u u m ,b y
a , d u a l c o n s t r a i n t ,b, y h ; ; ; ;
fepresentationaud production.The machinicsnsemust here be understood to respondto tr'o diferenr typesof fbrmarization.
This givesus ,-o',,"f., o?
in vectorialterms:the senseindicatesa mode of polyvocalconnectionamong production:things signified,which are classified,
paradigmatized,rendered
the machinic fluxes.Multiplicities of intensitycannotbe lumped togetheror im.po.tent; and signifiers,which are policedund ,y.,tugmurrzed.
But, outside
territorializedaiong any one systemofsignification.Each producesits own thisdual efrectof significarion,a new rypeofa-signifying
oiag.ammaiicrin; oi
spercifications, and this production of meaning,which does not contain the escapehas becomepossible.
processitself but developsas it were alongsideit, trans"'ersalli'. outside all A direct semioticrelationshipcan norvbe estabiished
betweenrhematter of
systemsof representation,is noneother than what we havedesignatedas the expression and the abs*act machines.Henceforth,the traditionai
distincrion
organlessi:ody. betweenrhe expressionor signifierand the conrent
or u,hatis signifiedtends
r. With disjunctite slnthr.rrr,the formalism of representationis establishedin to sto,pbeing obviously necessary.The expressio
n of a macltinic sri* no* ,ut ..
pride of place. Particular signil\,ingsubstancestake over the functioningof r n ep l a c eo t
a[.rstract machines;they take contlol. organizeand 'discipline'the connective ( r) the svstemofsignificationbasedon the
duality ofsignifierancrsignified;
svntheses. Though in their conscious,destructiveaspectthev are machinesof ( a ) r h e s y s r e mo l r e p r e s e n r a t i o bn a s e do n
. t h e i u a l i t y o f s u b s r a n i ea n d
de-territorialization,they are at the sametime structuresof re-territorializa- IOrm:
tion becauseofthe systemofdouble articulationthat producestheir e{Iectsof (q) the articulationof both thesesystemsas
a mode of subjectivationthat
significationand subjectivation.With disjunctivesyntheses, one movesback prevents anv direct contact with the reference-
that is, the intensive
and forth benr,eenthe dead end of iconic impotentization and a de- m u l t i p l i c r t vo f m a t e r i a li n t e n s i t i e s .
ten-itorializing diagrammatization capable of being reconnectedto rhe In this respecc,it may be held that rhe s'srem
ofrelerential thinking has
connecti\re synthesis. never been basically anything but one flnal
barrier, one last d.rpirut.
r02 Institutional Psychotherapv Tou'ards a Micro-Politics of Desire r03
atlempt to pre\ierlt the evcr more threatening prolileration of abstract N'{achinicconjuncrionswill find their meaning,wil be ,guided,
in their
t
n r a c l r i n efsr o r n' h t c e n t r a ln r a c h i n i cs t e m . ' de-territorializing intensitv as much from a flux oi'erecrons as
from a flux of
T'he two dua.lities- signified/signifier.substancelform- were subjec- equationsor axioms. I must stressthat this does not mean a return
'origins': to the
tivatrng; the expressiveduality - matter/absfact machine - implies a on the contrary, the establishmentof a colrectiveuttering fiorce
coilectiveuttering force. But, let me repeat,that de-subjectivation doesnot implies that we conrinueto passby way of the narrow ,defires,of
'human' semiotics.Even supposingthar the despotisrnof the si-gnifier
thereb-vinvalidate and the'schizzes'ofindividuated subjectivation.But this time,
it i, ul pure
the signifier were to be abolished,signifying languageswould still have a means- rvithoutany transcendenta.l dimension,without anv paralysingelrect
crucial role to piav as the means of containing the processesof re- on the historicalprocesses ofde-territorialization.
telritorialization,and io sive the machinic spearheadsofde-territorializa- It may be usefulhere to give a few examplesof abstractmachines.
Thesg
tion ti'reirlLrllfbrce.That is *'hy in schizo-ar-ralysis we shouldeive freerein to may be iogical machines set i' motion by the sciences,
or formulae of
Oedipalizir-rg representations and paranoid-fascistrepresentations, in order transversality'unleashed'in the courseofhistory,as for instance
in the sphere
the better to countei their tendencyto block the fluxes.and to start things of war machines or religion machines.But machinism of this
kind' atsr.r
going again in a kind of machinicforward rush. proliferates ar the microscopic level. consider whar we call
ar the La Borde
'Ihe
perspectii'eI am suggestingimpliesa fundamentalreversalof perspec- clinic the grid: in all the various lorms and stagesof its existence,
it involves
tive. \Ve are abandoningthe lbrmal classifications of semioticcomponents, the emergenceofan abstractmachine.The problem was to connect
the fiuxes
and instezrdare primarilv consideringthe kind of working organizationsthe-v of time, of Iabour,of functions,of mone;'und .o on, on a rather
differentmodc
constitute-*in view of specificsystemsof de-territorializingfluxes.The sign from the one normally prevailingin other establishments
of the samekind -
machinestakepart in the processes of de-territorializationat work withiu the which can be characterizedby the existenceofa relatively
staticorganogram
central n'rachinicphylum. Indeed there is no further need to establisha of function. The work time-iabie - written down on paper - the
cirJurati"onof
clear-cut distincticn between- say - a diagrammatizationof signs and a lunctions inscribed in a semiologyofgestures,the modification
'natural' fluxes, ofhierarchical
technologicalinnovation, or a scientific mutation ol or catesoriesinscribedin ajuridical and socialsemiology,all
'artificial' machines.\f ith both 'nature' and signs,we are concernedwith the theseare specific
manilestationsof the sameabstractmachinismthat conveys
a certain (locar,
sanletype of machinismand the samesemioticof material intensities. and not very important) mutation in productionreiations.
And it may have
Oppositions between nature and culture, signs and things, spirit and been becausethis sort ofmachinism had begun to appear at La Borde
ihat so
matter, theory and technologv,etc. appeared to make senseonly in the much fuss was made about our experimentsthere.r6Another
example of
contex'rol'asemiologv6fsignificationthat setout to classify,control,turn into abstract machines is the love rituals that characterize
'contents'it extracted different p..iodr.
clearly defined and specifiedobjects all the various Courtiy love,saysRendNelly, inrroduceda radicallynew organization
of the
liorn thr multiplicirieo s f d e - t e r r i t o r i a l i z ef d
s l i n t e n s i t y , l 5T h e e f f e c t o l u x e so f relationshipsbetweenmen and women in the context of the
feudal caste
electrons,fiuxes of signs,of experimentalcombinations.of iogic machines system. The semiotic of romantic love, in its turn, independent
of the
antl so on combine to give a rvide expansionto de-territorializingconjunc- significationsand sentimentsit expresses, seemsto me to correspondmore to
tions, and set the abstractmachineslree from the despotismofthe strata of settingup a certain kind of relationshipto childhood, to making
use of the
signifiers. intensitiesand territorialitiesof childhood in what I have
caleJ,childhood
1 4 . i U e t z b c l i c v r s t h a t C h o m s k , vt o s o m e e x t e n t g e t s b e y o n d H j e l m s l e r ' ' so p p o s i t i o nb e t u ' e e n blocks',as opposedto consciouschildhoodmemories.(That this
'fhc is a casenot
rxpression anci conlent, Chomskians refer to a'logic machine' prior to ihe text. and capabie of merely of significative themes but of setting in motion a
generaringit. which would overcome thc opposirion between the lorm ofthe content and the form of non_signifying
'I intensive machine is demonstrated by' the Jecisive part played
thc expression. his is .something that merits more proibund consideration.But it seemsto me, at [y .u.fr
firsr sighr, rhat such a logic rrachine is still restricted to the semioticsofsigni{ication, and uould nct
childhoodblocksin rhe music of a composerlike Schumann.t
rrake it possible to e{lict the passageto the absract machines which are to be lound prior, not
merely to the wri rten word, but to all machinic manifestationsof every kind, The same mav be said The Power Relationships within the Utterance
o{'thc system o[abstract objects suggestedby S. K. Saumjan's'Generative Applicative Model''
r 5 . I t m a y b e a n i n t u i t i o n o f t h i s s o r t t h a t l e a d sC h r i s r i a n M e t z t o s u g g e s ta n a n a l y s i so f t h e The functionof languageis not sorelyto serveas a channei
of transmissionfor
rclevant fcatures ol the material ofexpression, or to oppose the categoru ofexprcssiorr to that oi fluxesof inlormation. Languagesare not mere supports
, u t i n m l , v i e w h e i s w r o n g , w h e n s r u d v i n gt h e c i n e m a ,t o c o n t i n u et o t a l k a b o u t t h e
s i e n i f i c a t i o nB
to communication
narfer oftlre rign1fitr,rather than to use Hjelmslev's phrase, the matter ofrrpr:srion. r6, Cf. the special number ofthe revtew Rcchcrches
devotedto La Borde, no. z r, April r g76.
rcl4 Institutional Psychotherap,v Towards a Micro-Politicsof Desire r05
amorlg individuals;they are inseparablefrom the socialand politicai context producinga multitude of archaismsin the subjectiveterritorialitiesthat reify
in whir:h the-vare used.What could be calledarbitrarv in the rclationshipof utterance and split it between the two lormalized strata of content and
signification(the relationshipbetneenthe signifierand the thing signified)is express ion.
o n l v a p a r t i c u l a rr n a n i f e s t a t i o9nf t h e a r b i i r a r i n e s os f p o w e r .T h e d g m i n a n t The result of this is to block the semioticpraxis of the masses- of all the
l a n g u a q ei s a l w a v s t h e l a n g u a g eo f t h e d o m i n a n t c l a s s :t h e e s t a b l i s h m e n t various oppresseddesiring minorities - and to prevent their entering into
makes use of signifying semiotics,but, essentiallv,u'hat makes it tick is a direct contact with material or semiotic fluxes,preventingtheir becoming
non-signi{vingsemiotics.Linguists like Oswald Ducrot are thereloreled to connectedup to the de-territorializinglinesof the difl'erentsortsof machinism
'devaiuethe facilemetaphor that assimilateslanguagesand codes,and so to and so threateningthe balance of establishedpower, Referentialthought,
qualif1,.or evenaltogetherden;-the definitionof languageas an instrumentof understanding,interpretation,the transcendentalizing oldistinct, concrete
c o m r n u n i c a t i o n ' .P l r r o m i s i n go, r d e r i n g a, d v i s i n ge. i v i n ga n a s s u r a n c ep,r a i s - objects,and dogmatism all proceedfrom the same method of subjectir.rg
ing, taking seriousiyor lightlv, snerringand so on areas much micro-political peopleto the dominant statementsand significations.Every statementhas to
as thel, are linguisticactivities.To a greateror lesserextentthc;-are all what be understoodwithin the pre-established area of exclusivebi-polar values,
A u s t i n c a l l s ' i l l o c u t i o n a r t ' a c t i o n sE' .v e r l 's t a t e m e nct a n t h u s b e r e i a t e dt o a and everv semioticsequencehas to leavethe realnr of its original machinic
p a r t i c u l r r s t r a t i i l c a t i o n0 1 - L l t t e r a n caer,r a n g e db \ r a n k . c a s t e 'c l a s s T h e r e - lormation to enter the systemsof o{ficial expressionof significationand
fore an1,questioningof the statusof the collectiveapparatusesol urterance fepresen tation.II
would impl,v a re{ttsal to tailor the mode of utterance to the statements In mv view it would be wrong to acceptan oppositionbetweenscienceand
Lrttered.and a considerationofthe stratificationsolutteranceas b1'no means ideolog,v, especiallyin the obsessional mode of the Althusserians,who make
l e c l u c i h i es r m p i y t o l i n e u i s t i cs u h s t a n c e sB. e , v o n dt h e m e s s a q ees x p l i c i t l v that opposition massive,schematicand without any real relation to ll{arx.
expre,ssed and specificalll'r.rttered, the analvsisw'or:ldhave to con'siderthe We can expect no salvation frorn any all-embracing scienceor (totally
n o n - s i g n i f v i n gs e n r i o t i cd i m e n s i o n sr - r n d e r l y i n gi l,l u m i n a t i n g a n d d e c o u - mythical) scientificit,vof conceptsor theoriesconsideredindependentlyof
sructing ever)-discourse.Its aim rvouldnot be so much to trv to expressit all their technico-experimentalcontext and their situation in history. The
in terms of the text and the signifier. but to understand the true power relationshipbetweenscienceand politics cannot be one ofdependence.Of
situatrono{ lbrces,in other words the machinicengagements of desire. courseboth proceedlrorn sirnilar kinds of collectiveeconomicand social
'lhc
establishmentLrsessignif,vingsemiotics,but never losesitself com- engagements,but their semiotic productionsare directed along radically
plctely in them, and it would be a n.ristake to imagine that it could fall victim differentlines.
to its ou'n signifling methods and ideologies.The ruling classesfoster the Scientificstatements(in the context ofcurrent scientificproducrionrela-
developrnentof signifying behaviour. Indeed' this constitutesone basis of tions) are a kind of natural product of the field of logico-mathematical
t h ei r p o r v e rb, u t i t i s o n l y a m a t t e ro f u s i n gs e m i o t i ci n s t r u m e n t os 1 ' t h iksi n d t o formalism.r,u'hereas politicalstatements(takingpoliticsin the usualsense,not
'rlruq' pecrpleu'ho are alreadysubjugatedin other \4'avs-at the leveloftheir
in that of the micro-politicsof desire) are systematicallyreduced to match
relationshipsof desireproduction and of econotnicproduction personological,lamilial and humanist statements.In the circumsrances,
There are two methods of approaching an ideologicalsemiotic: one, it is rather over-generousto allow science- in fac!, a certain mythology of
starting lrom a position of real poln'er(the power of the State. or of a science- the exclusiveprivilegeof being the sourceof ruth, the solecentre
traditional political movement),tries to determinewhat dominant significa- ofall de-territorializations.And it would drag 3oliticsevendeeperinto a dead
t i o n s s h o u l d b e p r o d u c e da s a t e c h n i q u eo f s e n l i o t i ci m p o t e n t i z a t i o ntlh e end to try to reduce it to a sheer ideological exerciseif it should reluse to
orl)er,starting on the contrarl'lrom ideology,or e\rena critique ofideologl', submit to the injunctionsof the epistemologists. We must thereforedeny that
tnes to corne to terms with reality. In the latter case there is a kind of thereis any radical epistemologicalbreak betweena conceptualfield ofthe
simulation of real intensities,one is lulled by fine statementsand grandiose purely scientific,and an ideologythat is purely illusory and mystificatory.
programmesin the tamiliar st1'lec-rf reformistpartiesand othersu'ho seekto The moment the discourseof sciencebecomesa discoursenDozlscience(and
c<.liceal the real bases olpolitical porver, The politicsof sienificationconsists the dividing line is impossibleto deterniinefor certain rvhenit comesto the
ir: developing a rvhole s.vstemof confusing the machinic sense,and in
r8.'fhe axioms of referenlial thought have been analysed by Gilles Deleuze (in Dffirence el
ripy'tition) around, four themes: identit] in the concept, timilitude in rhe perception, anulogl in the
r 7. Osrvald Ducrot, Dtre el nepasdire,Hermann, t972, P. 2+. judgement and rygotioninthe position ofexistencc.
r06 lnstitutional PsychotheraPY Towards a Micro-Politics of Desire r07
voices that actuall,v speak lor science,so onl,v the epistemologistscan ted people.One cannotthereforecling to one'sfirst impressionof the painter
contraclictus) it autotnaticallv makes itself an ideologi'. that is to sav a as a man in societyand the composeras representingtranscendence. If we
. o n v e r s e l yw, h a t s e t o u t a s i d e o l o g i ecsa t ra c q u i r e
s e n r i o t i co l s i g n i 6 c a t i o n C examinethe natureof the collectivestructuresto which the two belong,rather
real effbctiveness, can be'scientificallV'manipulated and havedecisivesocial. than their individual attitudes,the paradoxis confirmed.
economicand material conseqlences- In short, I believeit to be quite absurd \'{usicalproductionoriginatesin extremelylargecollectivities;it implies a
to rr),to baserevolutionarypoliticson scieltce.The sciencecited by scientific major divisionof labour, and is supportedby a long musicaltradition. Every
Marxists doesnot exist; it is an imasinarv sciencethat operatesonly in the composerrvritesasan extensionof what hasgonebefore,anci,though he may
rvritings of episremoloeists. or] the other hand, I do not think it absurd to introduceexcitingnew ideas,he hasstill to dependon a wholetechnologyand
base a revolutionarv politics on semioticand analvticalexercisesthat have a whole professionalworld for his work to be presented.Composersbelong to
broken with the clominantsemiologr';in other words, on wa-vsof using the a kind of castewirh its own highly elaboraterituals,a castewhosepositionin
spokenand written word. pictures,gestures,groups and so on, that would the hierarchyolreactionarypowersis not negligibie.(Painters,ofcourse,are
clirectak:ng verv diflerentlinesthe relationshipbenveenthe flux ofsigns and connectednot so much r+'ithchepowersofthe aristocracyas thoseolfinance.)
all the de-territorializedfluxes.In point offact. it is bv getting caught up in One has here to contrastthe abstractmachinesof music (perhapsthe most
the ner of interpretativesemio.logies that the massesfaii to reaiizethe true non-signifyingand de-territorializingof alll) with the whole musical caste
spr.ingsof rheir power - that is their real control over industrial.technologic' svstem- its conservatories, its educationaltraditions, its ru.lesfor correct
al, scientillc,economicand socialsemiotics-and becomeboggeddou'n in the composition,its stresson the impresarioand so on. It becomesclearthat the
phantasiesof the dominant realitr',and in the modesof subjectilation anc collectivity of musical production is so organized as to hamper and delay the
repressionofdesire imposedupon them by the bourgeoisie lorceof de-territorializationinherent in music as such,We may think hereof
Horvevermuch scientificsemioticsmay be contaminatedby the dogmasof the history of the church's relationshipwith music, which goesback to the
religionand philosophv,thev remain as a wtole basedon a machinicpolitics origin of polyphony. For instance, the church always tried to block the
In thc last resort, what matters is always the engagementsof signs and of machinicexpansionof instrumentalmusic,and to allow only singing.It tried
technico-experimental complexes.whereasfinal obiectives,interpretations to set dogmatic limits to composition,and to impose particular stylesand
and graphic representationsalways end by taking secor-rd place But here forms.On the other hand, one of what Christian Metz calls the'outstanding
agaip, there is 1o automatic protection, no guaralltee of scientific practice featuresolthe subject-matterof pictorialexpression'may r'r,ell be the lact that
againstinterpretativeaberrations,a1d, as rve hale seen,scientrsrs cag often the painter, contrary to all appearances, is far more solitary than the
tirtlowsuch aberrationsrvith nothing short ofmystical lervour. composer.ls He is lar lessaflectedby tradition and the schools.Musical forms
To conclude nry remarks about the apparatusesof utierance, a few overwhelmthe listener,capturing, directing,conlrolling. A canvas,on the
commentsabout the semioticsof art. In this sphere,things are lessclear-cut; other hand, remainsat a distancefrom the art-lover- who can pick it up, put
'take-overbv the signifier'ofthework. the artist, the inspiration'the
rhereis a it down, glance at it, pass it by aitogether.The painter, the work and the
t a l e n t ,t h c g e n i u s Y . e t i t s e e m st h a t , o v e ra l l , o n e n ) a vs a v t h a t m o d e r na r t i s spectatorremain in a sensefundamentallyseparatefrom one another.In the
evolvinc towards a politics of non-significance:representationaland ma- final analysis,the collectivelorcesconstitutedby the plasticarts are far less
chinicenqagernents aregaitringoverrepresentative s.vstems of encodedexPres- 'human' and more machinic than are thoseof music,which evenin their most
sion. Bur if we look more closelyat the varioussortsof collectiveengagement, modern forms are infused with a politics of signifying redundancy. Though
we irave to qualifi' that statement.Tl-restereotypedimage we have of, sa-v,a painting is nranifestlymore territorializedthan music, the painter himselfis
painter, is of an individual more than usuallv open to sociallife. We picture far more de-teritorialized than the composer.
hirn rvith his lriendsin the cal6,for instance.He will probably be a member of
a school, and will almost certainlv be more politically involved than a
composerwould. Indeed we tend to seethe composeras a solitarycharacter,
wrestlingin a dizzying singlecombat with a musicalcreationthat he cannot
quite captr-rre. \'et it is noteworthythat, rvitl-rfew exceptions.composershave
aln'a-vs tended torvardsa delenceof traditionalvalues,tou'ardsreligion,even
towardssocialreaction.Indeed in their o\{;nway the)'areextremel,v commit- rg. C[ Alberto Nloravia's novel, La noia.