Connective Machine
"It is at work everywhere"... all is machines. Working in fits and starts, functioning smoothly at times. Even the breast and the mouth are machines. Notice they do not say, "like" machines, they do not say that there is a metaphorical affinity to a machine, but that they actually ARE machines. Thereby again blurring the distinction between a machine and an organism. The body and the machine are one and the same.
Judge Schreber figures prominently in this book. He was a famous case study of Freud's. He was from a wealthy and powerful family, he ran for political office and lost without going insane, and then won a high ranking judicial position and then served as a judge in Germany while he was literally psychotic. He was productive while literally breaking down. So he serves as an interesting case study to examine in the sense of an imperfect machine, a psychotic machine, that was still capable of performing his role within a very repressive German empire (that is, he was going nuts before WW1, and then in the interregnum before WW2, when Germany was becoming fascist). Eric Santner has written a wonderful book entitled "My Own Private Germany" where he looks at the Schreber case-study from a social psychology perspective, where he concludes that it was Schreber's alienation within a growing fascist nation that pushed him over the edge into psychosis.
D&G say, drawing from Bataille, Schreber is a "solar anus", Something is produced: the effects of a machine, not mere metaphors."(p.2) Again, Schreber is a machine, not a metaphorically "like" a machine. He is also actively transforming himself into a psychotic, he desires psychosis on some level. Rather than simply explaining his psychosis as the result of a repressive social environment, D&G prefer to think of his desire as producing its own psychosis. (A somewhat different view to that of Santner, who views Schreber as a victim of circumstances).
Then we get one of my inexplicably favorite lines, "A schizophrenic out for a walk, is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world" I think this is a masked allusion to Nietzsche, who for an unknown reason went mad (he may have gotten syphillis, or he may have just broke down mentally). It is also known that Nietzsche was an avid walker. He went for strolls on an almost daily basis, even when his health was failing. These walks, through some of the most beautiful countryside locations in all of Europe, inspired some of his greatest works. Nietzsche gained inspiration from walking. I may be wrong, but this, I think, serves as a loose conception of what schizoanalysis should become. Rather than analyzing patients in an austere setting, while laying vulnerable, on a couch of all places, get the schizophrenic out and moving. Walk with them. Get the juices flowing, and then you might get the machine to function smoothly for a few fleeting moments. It worked for Nietzsche! Put the body in motion rather than subject it to stale conversations in a static position. "Everything is a machine" (p.2) I think that they are also creating a very Buddhist sense of "essence", if such a thing exists at all. That is, the human essence is to be a vessel of joy (recall Foucault's introduction where he rails against asceticism and the depressed radical), and finding joy through discovering the connection with other beings and all other things. "Celestial machines, the stars or rainbows in the sky, alpine machines - all of them connected to those of his body." Walking in nature can alleviate schizophrenic dysfunctions in the body and the machine, only if the schizo or the neurotic, or whatever is willing to see these connections that exist with the natural world. It's not, "I am like a mountain", but "I am always already connected from the mountain", we breathe the same air, we come from the same source, when I die my body will decompose into soil, the same substance that makes up the mountain. So we are always connected. Getting out of the stuffy psychiatrists office is one way to get the mentally ill to possibly see this connection, which is a life-altering experience.
AND THIS IS ONLY Pg. 2!!!
Judge Schreber figures prominently in this book. He was a famous case study of Freud's. He was from a wealthy and powerful family, he ran for political office and lost without going insane, and then won a high ranking judicial position and then served as a judge in Germany while he was literally psychotic. He was productive while literally breaking down. So he serves as an interesting case study to examine in the sense of an imperfect machine, a psychotic machine, that was still capable of performing his role within a very repressive German empire (that is, he was going nuts before WW1, and then in the interregnum before WW2, when Germany was becoming fascist). Eric Santner has written a wonderful book entitled "My Own Private Germany" where he looks at the Schreber case-study from a social psychology perspective, where he concludes that it was Schreber's alienation within a growing fascist nation that pushed him over the edge into psychosis.
D&G say, drawing from Bataille, Schreber is a "solar anus", Something is produced: the effects of a machine, not mere metaphors."(p.2) Again, Schreber is a machine, not a metaphorically "like" a machine. He is also actively transforming himself into a psychotic, he desires psychosis on some level. Rather than simply explaining his psychosis as the result of a repressive social environment, D&G prefer to think of his desire as producing its own psychosis. (A somewhat different view to that of Santner, who views Schreber as a victim of circumstances).
Then we get one of my inexplicably favorite lines, "A schizophrenic out for a walk, is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world" I think this is a masked allusion to Nietzsche, who for an unknown reason went mad (he may have gotten syphillis, or he may have just broke down mentally). It is also known that Nietzsche was an avid walker. He went for strolls on an almost daily basis, even when his health was failing. These walks, through some of the most beautiful countryside locations in all of Europe, inspired some of his greatest works. Nietzsche gained inspiration from walking. I may be wrong, but this, I think, serves as a loose conception of what schizoanalysis should become. Rather than analyzing patients in an austere setting, while laying vulnerable, on a couch of all places, get the schizophrenic out and moving. Walk with them. Get the juices flowing, and then you might get the machine to function smoothly for a few fleeting moments. It worked for Nietzsche! Put the body in motion rather than subject it to stale conversations in a static position. "Everything is a machine" (p.2) I think that they are also creating a very Buddhist sense of "essence", if such a thing exists at all. That is, the human essence is to be a vessel of joy (recall Foucault's introduction where he rails against asceticism and the depressed radical), and finding joy through discovering the connection with other beings and all other things. "Celestial machines, the stars or rainbows in the sky, alpine machines - all of them connected to those of his body." Walking in nature can alleviate schizophrenic dysfunctions in the body and the machine, only if the schizo or the neurotic, or whatever is willing to see these connections that exist with the natural world. It's not, "I am like a mountain", but "I am always already connected from the mountain", we breathe the same air, we come from the same source, when I die my body will decompose into soil, the same substance that makes up the mountain. So we are always connected. Getting out of the stuffy psychiatrists office is one way to get the mentally ill to possibly see this connection, which is a life-altering experience.
AND THIS IS ONLY Pg. 2!!!