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Gilles [[Deleuze ]] and Félix [[Guattari]]'s <i>Anti-[[Oedipus]]: [[Capitalism ]] and Schizophrenia</i>, was originally intended to be the first volume of a two-volume [[work]]. The second volume, which was supposed to be entitled <i>Schizoanalysis</i>, never appeared under that title but was instead "replaced" by <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i>.

At the [[time ]] of its publication in 1972, <i>[[Anti-Oedipus]]</i> had an explosive impact. In a [[state ]] of high excitement, and still shaken by the events of May [[1968]], the [[French ]] intelligentsia greeted this work by a renowned [[philosopher ]] and an antiestablishment [[psychoanalyst ]] as a revolutionary brick through the window of [[psychoanalysis]]. Deleuze said of his collaboration with Guattari, "We don't work together, we work between the two of us".The Oedipus [[complex]], which [[psychoanalysts ]] describe as a fundamental and unavoidable step in the [[psychic ]] [[structuring ]] of the healthy [[child]], was denounced by the authors as an "[[impasse]]." The [[unconscious ]] was a production, a fabrication, a flow. Accordingly, there was no such [[thing ]] as a [[desiring ]] [[subject]], but rather flows of [[desire ]] that are independent of and that [[traverse ]] [[The Subject|the subject]]. These points of traversal of [[desire, ]] this flow, [[exists ]] in opposition to [[lack]], to the Law. "Lack ([[manque]]) is created, planned, and organized through [[social ]] production." [[Being ]] essentially revolutionary, desire is the [[enemy ]] of [[capitalist ]] [[society]], which psychoanalysis [[defends ]] and protects.The [[family ]] is the first source of the work of [[repression ]] operating in the flow of desire: "The family is thus introduced into the production of desire, and from earliest [[childhood ]] it will effect a [[displacement ]] of desire, an unheard-of repression." All of capitalism's efforts—and those of psychoanalysis—will go toward trying to maintain these flows of desire and "reterritorializing" [[them ]] by imposing limits; on the interior, Oedipus, on the [[outside]], as "the absolute [[limit ]] of every society" (p. 266), schizophrenia: "The [[Oedipal ]] [[triangle ]] is the personal and private territoriality that corresponds to all of capitalism's efforts at social reterritorialization" (p. 266).The "schizoanalysis" invented by the authors is defined as "a [[whole ]] scouring of the unconscious, a [[complete ]] curettage" (p. 311). The [[thesis ]] of schizoanalysis proposes that desire is a [[machine]], in fact, interconnected machines—"desiring-machines." This assemblage of machines represents the [[real ]] and constitutes the production of desire. Psychoanalysis is described as a [[belief ]] in a [[structural ]] ensemble of the [[symbolic ]] and the [[imaginary ]] that Deleuze and Guattari characterize as a [[mythical ]] belief. They radically challenge the [[Oedipus Complex|Oedipus complex ]] and accuse psychoanalysis of "beating down all the connections, the entire arrangement" because it "hates desire, hates [[politics]]." The two authors reject the [[idea ]] of any psychic [[reality]]: "There is only desire and the social, and [[nothing ]] else." Schizoanalysis, with its [[schizophrenic ]] [[process]], a "[[political ]] and social psychoanalysis" proposes to "undo the expressive oedipal unconscious, which is always artificial, repressive and [[repressed]], and mediated by the family, to gain access to the immediate productive unconscious."The authors are careful to distinguish between schizophrenia as a [[structure ]] and the schizophrenic as an entity. The latter is sick from the oedipalization that society attempts to impose upon him, but he represents the emblematic [[figure ]] of the revolutionary, who is in a [[position ]] to say, "Oedipus? Never heard of it" (p. 366). The schizophrenic process is revolutionary; its [[goal ]] is to "show the [[existence ]] of an unconscious [[libidinal ]] investment of socio-historical production." Here, schizoanalytic production is the opposite of [[psychoanalytic ]] expression.Proponents of antipsychiatry, in [[particular ]] Ronald D. Laing, proved to be valuable allies to Deleuze and Guattari. In effect, [[madness ]] is described not so much as a collapse but rather as a breakthrough. The goal of schizoanalysis is to enable the flows, to "tirelessly undo/defeat the egos and their assumptions." and it "makes no [[distinction ]] in [[nature ]] between political [[economy ]] and libidinal economy."In taking as their [[model ]] the schizophrenic process and contrasting it with the oedipalized [[neurotic ]] process, the authors constructed a [[seductive ]] [[theory ]] that was in keeping with its era. [[Marxist ]] and [[structuralist ]] elements are discernible. What are now referred to as "the events of May '68" had not yet been entered into the [[history ]] textbooks and the collective [[memory]]. The [[metaphor ]] of schizophrenia, stretched to the limit by Deleuze and Guattari, was resonant in the context of a breakdown in the political [[order ]] and the family. The disillusionments that followed are well known.It is somewhat surprising to note that in the very extensive [[index ]] of proper names in <i>Anti-Oedipus</i>, [[Sophocles ]] is not mentioned once. This is of course indicative of the authors' genuine intent to [[separate ]] Oedipus as a [[psychic structure ]] from Oedipus as a dramatic [[myth]]. It is the former, structural aspect of Oedipus that is fundamental to all civilizations. It is this Oedipus that is targeted by the authors, and not the dramatic figure of antiquity.Indeed, <i>Anti-Oedipus</i> today appears as an anti-dramatic [[text]], to be read as a [[comedy ]] deriding capitalism and glorifying a schizophrenia invented and amplified through the joint [[writing ]] of a philosopher and a psychoanalyst engaged in critical [[reflection ]] designed to challenge the bourgeois [[ideology ]] of their era.

* [[Schizophrenia.Source Citation# Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, Trans.). New York: Viking. (Original work published 1972]]

# Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, Trans.). New York: Viking. (Original work published 1972) ==References==<references/># Deleuze, Gilles, and Parnet, Claire. (1977). Dialogues. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. [[London]]: Athlone Press, 1987.