Anti-Schizophrenia
I've thought about the best way to approach this topic without being confined to talking about one particular author or setting myself up for an epic narration that will inevitably be mediocre. I think the best way is to simply discuss the topic in reference to the dialectical oppositions that are present, without much statement of historical facts. Nevertheless, this topic is as much about history as it is about philosophy, and it is largely in the recent history of Modernity that there has been a prevailing antischizophrenic ethos.
I'd like to call attention to Descartes' Demon as an object for inducing extreme doubt. This kind of idea suggests schizophrenia as it is a kind of odd, delusional and paranoid idea; however, the nature of it is antischizophrenic as a schizophrenic lacks the capacity to doubt. Just as anticapitalism, for instance, requires capitalism to exist, anti-schizophrenia must start with a schizophrenic premise. Wishing to proceed from this point, I'll simply state that Descartes, apart from separating mind from body, reimagines many Platonic ideas from dualism, to 'the demon' equivalent to cave allegory, but my bias in interpretation, stated plainly, is that he is not continuing an ironic tradition but commencing one of rationalization. These are dialectically opposed as ironic encompasses subjective, irrational and individual qualities and rationalization are objective, rational, and social qualities.
So anti-schizophrenia begins in the modern era as a process of rationalization. Schizophrenia is an irrational degenerative state and rationalization is a rational progressive state, so the dialectical argument of these two opposing phenomena's convenience in text is proof of its veracity in the world. This direct conflict is manifest as the most obvious form of anti-schizophrenia, the psychiatric aim of controlling, treating and ending schizophrenia. Ironically, this discussion of the topic is not going to be about psychiatric anti-schizophrenia, but sufficient proof of a modern anti-schizophrenia can be found in the history of psychiatry which is indelibly linked to Modernity.
If I am not going to talk about the anti-schizophrenia of psychiatry, what else is there to talk about? The position taken here is that schizophrenia possesses myriad essences NATURAL vs artificial, IRRATIONAL vs rational, INDIVIDUAL vs social, CREDULOUS vs doubtful or skeptical, IRONIC vs concordant, DISABLED vs able and so on, ad nauseum. Therefore, the discussion will address how a broader antischizophrenia is actually a dominant modern ethos.
My interest in this topic stems from an interest in the year 1968 and the events that unfolded in Europe and North America, mainly. In France were the student and labor demonstrations, in Ireland the beginning of the Troubles, and in USA a liberalizing social and academic movement. It is a difficult topic to research due to the immense noise of information on the topic, but where I can I glean information on the connection between the Orange and that hypothesized influence on rationalization from Calvin to Descartes and the importance of this sect/ regime in the history of all three stated countries.
Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia inspired by the events of '68 in France, suggesting that these events had a schizophrenic essence. The antifascist (INDIVIDUAL v collective, LIBERTARIAN vs communitarian, INTROSPECTIVE vs watching others, CONFINED IN TOTALITY vs totalitarian, DISORGANIZED vs confederate, and so on, ad nauseum) essence of schizophrenia was in direct conflict with the fascism of Capitalism.
I look at that writing as important to my worldview, but I don't want this general discussion to be about that book which fails to state a thesis in the plain terms I now attempt. There are other writings that are important, mainly postmodern ones, but I also find the work of British literature 1984 by George Orwell interesting. It calls attention to the antischizophrenic conflict inherent in modern technologies, such as the telescreen that watches you, as suggestive of the premise of schizophrenia. However, it poses the real question that sorts every-one-of-us who is faced with it: to be unaffected by the paranoia of a possible totalitarian regime, and be a healthy conformist -OR- be affected, becoming a sick and delusional antitotalitarian schizo analog (that ironically fuels totalitarianism).
Anyway it's 7:00pm, I've got other things to do, any questions, comments and/or concerns are welcome.
I'd like to call attention to Descartes' Demon as an object for inducing extreme doubt. This kind of idea suggests schizophrenia as it is a kind of odd, delusional and paranoid idea; however, the nature of it is antischizophrenic as a schizophrenic lacks the capacity to doubt. Just as anticapitalism, for instance, requires capitalism to exist, anti-schizophrenia must start with a schizophrenic premise. Wishing to proceed from this point, I'll simply state that Descartes, apart from separating mind from body, reimagines many Platonic ideas from dualism, to 'the demon' equivalent to cave allegory, but my bias in interpretation, stated plainly, is that he is not continuing an ironic tradition but commencing one of rationalization. These are dialectically opposed as ironic encompasses subjective, irrational and individual qualities and rationalization are objective, rational, and social qualities.
So anti-schizophrenia begins in the modern era as a process of rationalization. Schizophrenia is an irrational degenerative state and rationalization is a rational progressive state, so the dialectical argument of these two opposing phenomena's convenience in text is proof of its veracity in the world. This direct conflict is manifest as the most obvious form of anti-schizophrenia, the psychiatric aim of controlling, treating and ending schizophrenia. Ironically, this discussion of the topic is not going to be about psychiatric anti-schizophrenia, but sufficient proof of a modern anti-schizophrenia can be found in the history of psychiatry which is indelibly linked to Modernity.
If I am not going to talk about the anti-schizophrenia of psychiatry, what else is there to talk about? The position taken here is that schizophrenia possesses myriad essences NATURAL vs artificial, IRRATIONAL vs rational, INDIVIDUAL vs social, CREDULOUS vs doubtful or skeptical, IRONIC vs concordant, DISABLED vs able and so on, ad nauseum. Therefore, the discussion will address how a broader antischizophrenia is actually a dominant modern ethos.
My interest in this topic stems from an interest in the year 1968 and the events that unfolded in Europe and North America, mainly. In France were the student and labor demonstrations, in Ireland the beginning of the Troubles, and in USA a liberalizing social and academic movement. It is a difficult topic to research due to the immense noise of information on the topic, but where I can I glean information on the connection between the Orange and that hypothesized influence on rationalization from Calvin to Descartes and the importance of this sect/ regime in the history of all three stated countries.
Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia inspired by the events of '68 in France, suggesting that these events had a schizophrenic essence. The antifascist (INDIVIDUAL v collective, LIBERTARIAN vs communitarian, INTROSPECTIVE vs watching others, CONFINED IN TOTALITY vs totalitarian, DISORGANIZED vs confederate, and so on, ad nauseum) essence of schizophrenia was in direct conflict with the fascism of Capitalism.
I look at that writing as important to my worldview, but I don't want this general discussion to be about that book which fails to state a thesis in the plain terms I now attempt. There are other writings that are important, mainly postmodern ones, but I also find the work of British literature 1984 by George Orwell interesting. It calls attention to the antischizophrenic conflict inherent in modern technologies, such as the telescreen that watches you, as suggestive of the premise of schizophrenia. However, it poses the real question that sorts every-one-of-us who is faced with it: to be unaffected by the paranoia of a possible totalitarian regime, and be a healthy conformist -OR- be affected, becoming a sick and delusional antitotalitarian schizo analog (that ironically fuels totalitarianism).
Anyway it's 7:00pm, I've got other things to do, any questions, comments and/or concerns are welcome.
Comments (46)
I think you misrepresent the role of the 'demon' in Descartes's arguments. He does not conclude that the environment was set up to fool us. In fact, his confidence that such was not the case troubled many who read him afterwards.
I do agree that Descartes may have had some genuine level of dissociation
Schizophrenia isn't describable as a disorder that causes great doubt. It's a complex psychiatric disorder, where there may be varying degrees of hallucinations and paranoia, some of which the person may know aren't real.
Descartes' demon wasn't the creation of paranoid schizophrenic. He didn't run helplessly in fear of pursuit. He didn't wear a tin foil hat or look beneath his bed for demons. It was a thought experiment.
Sorry if the post is not clear but I dont intend in any way to imply Descartes was schizo. I meant the premise is schizo and his idea challenges or opposes it.
I imagine sanity as mental wholeness, and that means the integration of emotion, imagination, reason, and so on.
I don't have to imagine, I clearly see society as a whole as profoundly sick, dangerously sick, addicted to violence against itself, detached from reality in all sorts of ways, behaving irrationally and incoherently, and talking nonsense.
It follows, I suppose, that the diagnosed schizophrenic manifests individually the whole of the fragmentation of society. To be sane is to be sensitive, and the sensitive among us have projected onto them, the repressed negativity of those around them, in the same way that any oppressed group does; whatever is unacceptable to me, I make that you. You are mad, because I cannot possibly be.
Here is a song about how to fit in to this fragmented society :
If you are just using the term analogously to describe modern human society at large then it is not particularly hard to say so because I just did so. To say it is a complex matter is also not really much of an excuse. Many things are complication that can be summed up in an ad hoc manner to begin with.
All you appear to have presented up to now is a list of terms used in polarity without exposing why, how or why I or anyone else should care.
If it merely boils down to political and social institutions and methodologies approaching human life as something that is either highly structured or essentially chaotic then again, you can just say so.
Quoting I like sushi
Ill give you a taste of the notions of schizophrenia and schizo-analysis that Deleuze and Guattari introduced, since it seems to be the main inspiration of introberts OP. He says he doesnt want to link his ideas exclusively to D-G, but I think it would
help if he could lay out in some detail what they wrote and contrast his arguments with theirs.
In his first mentions of schizophrenia, Deleuze distinguishes between a clinical psychopathology and a metaphorical use of the word.
when Kant puts rational theology into question, in the same stroke he introduces a kind of disequilibrium, a fissure or crack in the pure Self of the 'I think', an alienation in principle, insurmountable in principle: the subject can henceforth represent its own spontaneity only as that of an Other, and in so doing invoke a mysterious coherence in the last instance which excludes its own - namely, that of the world and God. A Cogito for a dissolved Self: the Self of 'I think' includes in its essence a receptivity of intuition in relation to which I is already an other. It matters little that synthetic identity - and, following that, the morality of practical reason - restore the integrity of the self, of the world and of God, thereby preparing the way for post-Kantian syntheses: for a brief moment we enter into that schizophrenia in principle which characterizes the highest power of thought, and opens Being directly onto difference, despite all the mediations, all the reconciliations, of the concept.
Deleuze argues that philosophy has been under the burden of a dogmatic image of thought that swallows differences within formal logic and propositional rationality.
It is not a question of opposing to the dogmatic image of thought another image borrowed, for example, from schizophrenia, but rather of remembering that schizophrenia is not only a human fact but also a possibility for thought - one, moreover, which can only be revealed as such through the abolition of that image. It is noteworthy that the dogmatic image, for its part, recognizes only error as a possible misadventure of thought, and reduces everything to the form of error.
Deleuze is using his peculiar notion of schizophrenia in service of a radical concept of becoming influenced by Nietzsche.
Julie Van der Wielen writes:
In Anti?Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari describe what they call the schizophrenic process. Their aim is actually ethical?philosophical and socio?political; it transcends a merely clinical point of view on schizophrenia.1 Nevertheless, one can also distinguish here a description of schizophrenia as a mental condition, in a positive manner: according to them, if the schizophrenic individual seems confused and unable to operate within meaningful structures, this must not be explained negatively, as a failure to interiorize such structures. Instead, one must explore the way in which the schizophrenic functions and try to understand his logic without preconceptions.
I have no problem with wacky analogies and bizarre ideas, but when they have no real anchor and concatenate into analogies of analogies of analogies nah thanks :)
The main problem with taking this to any extreme, in any aspect of human sociopolitical make up, is that society is necessarily a concept of structures not a concept of non-structures.
I have said for many, many years now that if I was to venture out and write a philosophical work it would be titled something like Dichotomies & Magnitudes I would not waste time with layers of analogies though and use the term schizophrenia as a means of describing society (be this in terms of economics or any other societal category of thought).
Note: I actually believe that what is psychologically framed as schizophrenia is basically unconscious contents spilling onto the conscious sphere. I believe that everyone had episodes it is only that some recall them and others do not - but I am mostly referring to psychosis here rather than the specific brain-disorder of schizophrenia.
Below are some point form notes on antischizophrenia:
-schizo is subjective or 'intrasubjective' whereas modern rationality is intersubjective ex. a typical academic paper is a conglomeration of citations as if to make an intersubjctive appeal "this is what many people think"
- schizo defies predictability and control and features a breakdown in routines, these are characteristic of modern society
-schizo is prone to religious delusion, rationalization has separated from its religious influences
-schizo rebels against being watched, and watching in terms of surveillance and popular spectacle are part of modernity
-schizo is prone to solipsism which is extreme indirect realism whereas the modern view of reality is objective to the point of direct realism, even though ironically the neuroscientific view is indirect, the former is the standard schizos are held to in psychiatry
-schizo interprets reality as if they are not watching, and acts as if they are not thinking which is against modern standards of rational thought and behavior
-schizo is a materal condition (biological) that gives rise to antithetical ideas to status quo kind of like dialectical materialism
-schizo has a philosophical repertoire existential, phenomenological, irrational, nihilistic, cynical, pessimistic, subjective, transcendentalist, individualist, solipsism, indirect realism etc. These are argumentative to prevailing philosophies
-schizo is ironic as it is discordant with reality, expectation, codes, modernity, etc.
-schizo is predominantly introvert whereas extrovert is more in line with modern social agenda
-schizo is absurd this offends modern meaning as an objective truth of objects
-schizo presents possibility that human consciousness is fundamentally illusory which offends the modern view of objective truth
-schizo can create moral panics which can be used to increase communitarianism, a modern quasi-fascist agenda.
What seems to me to be a problem with your post is that it seems to misrepresent schizophrenia as being equal to lack of rationality. Schizophrenia is a recognized clinical condition. I am not denying that it may have some aspects which go beyond the medical model. Even though the tradition of antipsychiatry has faded one important work, which may still have some useful insights is RD Laing's, 'The Divided Self'. This looks at the existential splits in thinking often presenting in families, involving conflicting messages.
Generally, I think that your topic area is an interesting one and my main objection is to your title. This is based on my experience of knowing and working with people who have been diagnosed and living with psychosis. However, the whole idea of what is madness is an interesting one for reflection, as written about by Michael Foucalt. The whole antipsychiatry movement was important too, incorporating the social and political aspects of the labelling of mental illness.
The topic which you have raised is a large one, especially as you link it to philosophy and consciousness. Your outpost tries to cover so many aspects, all of which are important. However, it is a bit jumbled and I probably needs to involve some research, in order for it not to come across as a philosophy based on the label of schizophrenia. I do wonder how much knowledge do you have of the condition and experience of schizophrenia as a basis for starting a philosophy discussion on 'Anti-Schizophrenia'.
As for your other comments about the quality of the post or my own expertise/ experience of schizo, both can be addressed by the admission of amateurishness. I am not a professional philosopher or academic. I am university educated, but I work in the skilled trades. Much of what I know about philosophy is from prior to 2010 and I am going off of increasingly diminishing memory. I don't have time or energy to give philosophy the attention I would like. As for schizophrenia, I obviously have no clinical experience with it, it is just my belief that the premodern world was more schizo than the modern world, which is increasingly antischizo.
This reminds me of the Table in Anti-Oedipus. It has so much stuff on it that has been placed there for no reason. It is complex yet simple, and can no longer be used as a table. Like in a so called schitsofrenicis drawing it has had things added until there is no more to add and no longer has any clear use or describable properties. It has become more of a plie. You wouldnt know how to grasp it physically or mentally. Me, I guess you could find some pleasure in taking things of the table (in case of the drawing bring out an eraser).
Quoting trogdor
I'm guilty as charged. However, having no clinical experience doesn't put a gag order on me from talking about something I have a sense of in the contemporary world.
The National Socialist regime of Germany, can be considered sort of a synthesis of Orange Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, but a modernization of those belief systems. Germans at that time adopted elements of Roman fascism, the salute and the social structure, and the ethos was a derivative of the protestant belief that there were signs (blonde, blue eyed, rational etc) that indicated they were blessed by God. There is also Weber's thesis of the importance of this protestantism to German history. But that is not really here nor there, but simply provides a segue back into Rene Descartes, who was another combination of Catholic and Orange. Being highly critical of the triad of Modernism, Roman Catholicism and Orange-ism, I came to look at this complex of embodying essences: in modernism, rationality; in Orange-ism, the predestined blessed and damned nature of opposing kinds; and in Roman Catholicism, fascist collectivism, totalitarianism and authoritarianism. This is all simplification and generalization.
It didn't take much of a leap to connect my anti-introvert hypothesis to anti-schizophrenia. It became evident that schizo is an extreme that covers all the bases of the anti-introvert hypothesis, and as a further extreme is better for dialectical theorizing. Not only that, schizophrenia has a history of persecution/ treatment that is well documented. So appropriately, as a a rejection of Cartesian doubt, I persist in my belief in a complex that renders certain types of people unfit and that this orders and sorts people socially, determines how they are treated, the kinds of social interactions they have, whether they thrive, commit suicide, otherwise die, and succeed or fail. I call it antischizophrenia, but schizophrenia is one extreme in a bipolar conflict that everyone is either opposing or analogous to.
I understand that you are talking about essences. And that these are aspects of schizophrenia but aren't schizophrenia in itself, and that mechanisms exist that categorize these essences into ultimately a disease. The anti-schizo ethos is a set of essences responsible for the stability of a given structure. As i understand it from you this structure is in itself more correlated to introversion? My problem with some of this is the classification of the opposites (i don't know much about dialectics) like the classification seems prone to human error and disagreement in it's basic elements.
If they were getting it right then philosophy should reduce to something singular and not multiple opposing theories. A scientific theory. of information should be a prerequisite but is non-existent in formal philosophy. Maybe someone more current knows but the trend in academic philosophy departments seems to be away from basic philosophy towards political philosophy...but depends on the school.
But just about Descartes possibly being inspired by the demon that would come to be known as Schizophrenia to form the basis for the prevailing justified true belief zeitgeist of modernity, and the cogitio is a rather interesting topic. That it has created an antischizophrenic dialectical conflict is a little ambitious in hindsight.
My view of psychosis or schizophrenia is it's likely more than a biologic failure but more often information processing anomalies...and missed by the professionals...who have no economic interest in a real cause. But in philosophy we should be looking for the real cause because it is relevant to questions in philosophy like how non-physicals in our minds interact with the physical world.
I think your attitude toward the anti-schizo establishment can be categorized as a paranoia. This puts you in the schizo category. It's a no-win situation for you, because you only encourage the divide which sets you apart and gives them power over you.
This is the common problem with any sort of anti-establishment movement. Characterizing yourself as anti-establishment (even if establishment is characterized as anti-...) puts yourself into a me against them situation which is guaranteed to render you as an oppressed individual, not having the power of the group.
I believe that the only true way to get what you want is to actually break down the divide which you seem to be intent on emphasizing. This allows you to disguise your anti-establishment passion, giving you entry into the establishment. Then you might be allowed to work from within to bring about the changes you desire. Positioning yourself as an individual who has willfully distanced oneself from the group, and is picked on because of this difference, will not get you much sympathy.
So Stalin for example is unreasonable, a problem, anti-capitalist, schizo and represents the age before capitalism. I see these essences in the may 68 revolt (communist) from the perspective of the pro-modernity (capitalist). And i guess like nazis are pro-modernity, so they are anti-schizo. and schizophrenia represents the enemy of modernist society in its ultimate form; someone who can't contribute to the capitalist metaphorical machine, or maybe it's more like someone who doesn't see the point at all. But the question arises: does that not go for everyone in a capitalist system who don't participate, old, sick, (real)leftist etc? Or are you saying those have a schizo essence because they are counter modernity?