Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:41:28 -0800
To: <deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Subject: Re: [D-G] Mystic, psychosis, ,


Hello Wouter Hwenk

The question of clarity is an interesting one-clear in relation to what? According to the DSM, psychosis is manifest as disordered thinking in so far as it is not ordered by the order words of the DSM!

Te clarity described by different kinds of yogic traditions is the clarity achieved when order words break down. Yet most also describe a disciplined and focused method precisely to avoid the chaotic immeersion in psychotic experience. You both seem to know your way around the literature and proabably know more than I about this but I would want to draw a line between a disciplned mediational technique and the states of consciousness that can be achieved and the seeming randomness of florid psychosis-this may be constrolled mediationally-indeed I have worked quite hard at doing this but meditatation is still an apparatus of capture.

As I understand lacan, psychosis is what occurs when the father's law is not internalised or if it breaks down. One of the things I have observed in my own episodes and the episodes of colleagues is the construction of new linguistic rules in th episodes. These are quite often paranoic rules-being persecuted by various agencies, for example, is one that inflates the importance of the person experiencing this and shores up primary narcisism. Experiencing myself as  a spaceship, alternatively, was a transient way of constructing my own big Other at the fringes of this logic-and also narcissitic (but very necessary at the time). So I'm not so into romanticizing what happens in psychosis as revolutionary-some of it is ultra paranoic. For example, delusions are like religion in so far as they only attend to the evidence that supports them-This sets up the production of closed repetitions at another level of embodiment. Because this evidence is experienced through the senses, it is
  real for the expereincer. The ontological status of this real is highly ambiguous. It is not real ( as in not actual) for everyone else in the room. So for these people, the reality is unextended and virtual. For the experiencer, the reality is actual and extended. This embodied ambiguity occupies a space that confounds the father's law. If Lacan's 'real' is discursively founded on lack than the reality of the person who expereince psychosis cannot 'be'-yet it undoubtedly is for many people that I know. This is enough for me to support a conception of the real based on plenitude. But I would still not link psychosis with clarity (despite the oceanic moments where it feels like all is clear). Rather, I would suggest this perception is the ultimate in the grandiose self deception-encountering being as a clamour, alternately, is more like an unclarity that deafens-I don't really have words for it and as stated earlier, one could not live there for long. The advice about saving
  a bit of land is very sound in this respect and, in my view, psychotic delusions are much more about the fictive construction of land than the deterriorialiation of land as such. Maybe, making new territories (David Wood talks about time shelter) is what the de and resubjectifications of psychosis are about. However, I can only speak for the lands I have made and abandoned. They are of little interest to anyone but myself. It would be interesting to hear from another pathway through expereinces of psychosis.

Cheers
Ruth 

 
Sloughing one's skin.-The snake that cannot slough its skin perishes. Likewise spirits which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirits (Nietzsche: Daybreak:V:573)   


--- wku-AT-ziggo.nl wrote:

From: "Wouter Kusters" <wku-AT-ziggo.nl>
To: <deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Subject: Re: [D-G] Mystic, psychosis, ,	"Normopaths" (from Guattaris de la borde)
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:30:02 +0100

Hello everybody,

> This article tries to seperate psychosis from mystical experience.

To separate AND to connect them

> Now, im "Kundalini Yoga" by Satyanda this is clear cut, referring to the
> work of Motoyama:
> If you can think clear and concentrated, it is not psychotic.
>
> Let us remark, that "clear" does not mean according to the mainstream of
> actual public opnion.
> This "people say" goes much deeper, also as a measure,
> as one may think superficial.
> "Concentrated" may be a little bit more "formal" and perhaps
> not so much controversal in concrete cases.
> But, as is will argue, even here "people say" is more
> effective present, then tolerable.

Clear and concentrated in the loose sense of the words, as predicates not
pertaining to psychosis. let me tell you this: psychosis is (can be) the
most clear lucid state thinkable - at least as I experienced. Concentration
is another thing. Usually we say that someone is able to concentrate when he
can remain during a certain amount of time withion conventionally defined
boundaries of some domain of discourse. In psychosis conventio0ns
dissolve...which means that the usual "agendas" of what belongs and what
does not belong to a 'proper' stretch of discourse are overridden.

> Real coherence and concentration as mesure is also indicated by a
> remark of
> Jaspers, who declares genuine
> pathological thinking as confused.

Yes, indeed, but it is exactly this Jaspers who at the one hand opened up
the phenomenologiocal approach for all kinds of psychopathology, but...at
the same time closed the door for so-called incomprehensible psychotic
discourse. Key figures in German phenomenological psychiatry who did leave
open the door for assessments interpretations of psychosis were Binswanger,
Konrad, Von Gebsattel, etc. Most prominent and more readable is of course
the still classic work of Louis Sass ion Madness and Modernism (Of course
for those who read Dutch...the classic work in our little language is my own
"Pure madness" (2005).


> This is the case for a Lacanian psychonalytic understanding too.
> Especially Guattari and Deleuze  have their professional
> background in these things from Lacan.
> Left Lacanist was an etiquette in this direction.

Lacan is quite overrated when iot comes to understanding what a psychosis
phenomenologically means. Of course, you may say, we are not interested in
phenomenology, but what is the alternative considering psychosis? I mean we
are not discussing senseless dead academic texts, but real practices in
psychiatry. In other words...should we send another bunch of 'cultural
theorists with books of deleuze and lacan in their hands, knowing beforehand
what they will meet, of should we send some open-minded phenomenologists
over there? I can tell you from a patient's perspective: Give me the
open-minded ones.

Anyway...who cares?

wk

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