In the previous section,

Note 1: I will constantly be revising this blog post in order to do a line-by-line interpretation of the text.

• Citation Note: Full citation provided at the end of this post

Paragraph One

Deleuze and Guattari write:

It is easy to see that the problem is first of all practical, that it concerns above all else the practice of the cure. (AO, 56)

Up until this point, it is evident that the concern — both for psychoanalysis and Deleuze and Guattari’s project — is that of crafting a kind of cure. They say:

For the frenzied oedipalization process takes form precisely at the moment when Oedipus has not yet received its full theoretical formulation as the “nuclear complex” and leads a marginal existence. (AO, 56)

Oedipalization refers to the process by which desire becomes trapped within the familial structure and thereby represses itself. Importantly, this process does not depend on being formally theorized in order to occur. As we saw in our examination of Sigmund Freud’s early texts, there is no moment where psychoanalysis definitively goes astray. Thus, the roots of psychoanalysis carry with them a repressive interpretive practice as oedipalization takes form prior to the codification of Oedipus. As noted in the previous section, Oedipus occupied only a “marginal existence” throughout much of Freud’s work. Deleuze and Guattari write:

The fact that Schreber’s analysis was not in vivo detracts nothing from its exemplary value from the point of view of practice. (AO, 56)

They turn to the case of Daniel Paul Schreber. Although Schreber was never a direct patient of psychoanalysis — his case was analyzed retrospectively rather than in vivo (in-person or in a clinical setting) — his text Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903) became a foundational case study for psychoanalytic interpretation. Schreber’s memoirs detail his descent into what was clinically diagnosed as “dementia praecox,” a term used to describe mental illness — what we now refer to as psychosis and schizophrenia.

Deleuze and Guattari explain:

In this text (1911) Freud encounters the most formidable of questions: how does one dare reduce to the paternal theme a delirium so rich, so differentiated, so “divine” as the Judge’s — since the Judge in his memoirs makes only very brief references to the memory of his father. (AO, 56–57)

Freud’s text The Case of Schreber explores the interpretive methods applied to Schreber’s delirium. Yet, within Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, there are only brief references to his parents — his father is rarely mentioned. Deleuze and Guattari critique the reductiveness of Freud’s interpretation, which centers Schreber’s delirium in terms of repressed homosexual desire and paternal conflict. Given the extraordinary complexity of Schreber’s delirium, such a reading appears forced and unwarranted. When Deleuze and Guattari describe Schreber’s delirium as “divine,” they are referring to how Schreber believed he was communicating directly with God.

On several occasions Freud’s text marks the extent to which he felt the difficulty: to begin with, it appears difficult to assign as cause of the malady — even if only an occasional cause — an “outburst of homosexual libido” directed at Dr. Flechsig’s person. (AO, 57)

• An endnote at the end of this sentence cites Sigmund Freud, Three Case Studies (New York: Collier, Macmillan, 1970). Curiously, this text is more commonly known as Three Case Histories, which includes the cases of the Wolf Man, the Rat Man, and Schreber.

Freud himself found it difficult to completely reduce Schreber’s case to homosexual desire. Specifically, he believed Schreber had projected this desire onto his physician, Dr. Flechsig. However, this did not stop Freud:

But when we replace the doctor with the father and commission the father to explain the God of delirium, we ourselves have trouble following this ascension; we take liberties that can be justified only by the advantages they afford us in our attempt to understand the delirium. (AO, 57)

• An endnote is at the end of this sentence which continues to cite Sigmund Freud, Three Case Studies (New York: Collier, Macmillan, 1970).

Deleuze and Guattari problematize Freud’s interpretive framework, particularly his attempt to explain Schreber’s madness as the result of repressed homosexual desire and unresolved parental issues — which then becomes projected onto Dr. Flechsig. Freud then replaces the doctor with the father, elevating the father as the source behind Schreber’s hallucinations of God. This ascension — from doctor to father to God — is difficult to justify. Deleuze and Guattari argue that Freud imposes his own theoretical structure onto Schreber’s delirium and then rationalizes this imposition by claiming it makes the case more intelligible.

Deleuze and Guattari continue:

Yet the more Freud states such scruples, the more he thrusts them aside and sweeps them away with a firm and confident response. (AO, 57)

Freud recognizes and acknowledges the difficulties in applying certain interpretations to Schreber’s case, yet he immediately “thrusts them aside,” reaffirming the validity of his own theoretical framework with confidence. They write:

And this response is double: it is not my fault if psychoanalysis attests to a great monotony and encounters the father everywhere — in Flechsig, in the God, in the sun; it is the fault of sexuality and its stubborn symbolism. (AO, 57)

• An endnote is at the end of this sentence which continues to cite Sigmund Freud, Three Case Studies (New York: Collier, Macmillan, 1970).

Furthermore, it is not surprising that the father returns constantly in current deliriums in the most hidden and least recognizable guises, since he returns in fact everywhere and more visibly in religions and ancient myths, which express forces or mechanisms eternally active in the unconscious.5 (AO, 57)

It should be noted that Judge Schreber’s destiny was not merely that of being sodomized, while still alive, by the rays from heaven, but also that of being posthumously oedipalized by Freud. (AO, 57)

From the enormous political, social, and historical content of Schreber’s delirium, not one word is retained, as though the libido did not bother itself with such things. (AO, 57)

Freud invokes only a sexual argument, which consists in bringing about the union of sexuality and the familial complex, and a mythological argument, which consists in positing the adequation of the productive force of the unconscious and the “edifying forces of myths and religions.” (AO, 57)