[Deleuze-Guattari] waffling, again...

[Super Dragon]

Hi everyone (and no-one), 

thanks Chris for the psychosis link-its an interesting proposition-i will make an effort to find out if there is anyone who expereinces psychosis who has been blind since birth. i'm hoping that there is for i would not want, after years of constructivism, to link psychotis to brain development (kind of gives too much ground back to biological determinism) but worth finding out nevertheless.

charles, the url would not work so i am still in a state of ignorance ( name ruth). however, your post sounds like you have been doing thoughtful work which i would like to hear elaborated more should you have the time.

 i have a bit of a practical dillema around the role of the expert. i agree with what you say but, in practice, one is often in dialogue with majoritarian discourse. for example, i'm also involved in a service user training initiative-basically people using or who have used mental health services meet with trainee clinical psychologists once a month to answer questions  about training concerns from the context of service user perspectives. this all ran smoothly until it came to naming the role. the group felt that their function was consultative so decided on consultant which was rejected on the grounds that it implied considerable professional training, skill and expertise. also that the term had other connotations in the nhs ( that is don't step on the toes of the doctors). the group replied that anyone who had self managed a psychotic episode also had considerable skill and profesional experience-the group was made up of a maths teacher a special needs teacher an ex social worker. whetherthey had been 'professional' or not, they considered themselves the experts of their own experience-there are PR consultants and other kinds of consultant. the group asked why they were being required to use a name (advisor) that did not fit what they were doing. anyhow, the choice came down to pulling out-then the work would not be done at all or raising all this stuff in the project evaluation. the group decided that they take this path. so wouster-you are right to be cautious-there is a lot of work to do yet.

the point of all this? i support the group in so far as they need a site of enunctiation in practices that have power over them. moreover, i think there  still needs to be room to acknowledge what people can do. however, i work in the awareness that the experts of their own experience could easily become as despotic as any other kind of expert. resistance is not innocent in other words. i find mysel in a continual negotation between making room in majoritarian languages and contesting the egocentric premises of this language.  

the focus on neologisms is the other side of this problem. psychaitry defines psychosis as lacking in insight and out of touch with reality. i don't think i need to bother with the real on this list but lacking in insight clearly belongs to subjective interiority. there is also the whole question of reflection and, again, power. it is quite ok to have exstatic expereinces if one is a theologian or a philosopher but not so for most other subjectivities. people that expereince psychosis frequently dialogue with their voices and often has a reflective dimension that is comparable to but not the same as 'sane' reflection. this is important because psychoanalysis often refuses to work with people that experience psychosis. however, psychosis is as much an attempt to make sense out of nonsense as is it is a flight from dominant sense regimes.so been doing a lot of work on  idioysyncratic syntaxes of  exteriority. its nothing big or very clever-just trying to find a way of listening responsively to expereinces that don't follow recognised conventions but usually have some of their own. we've been thinking of this as a kind of translation (with all the problems of [power and transposition that go along with this). 

Take care
Ruth.c

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)   


--- C.W.Kusters at let.ru.nl wrote:

From: "Wouter Kusters" <C.W.Kusters at let.ru.nl>
To: <deleuze-guattari at lists.driftline.org>
Subject: Re: [Deleuze-Guattari] waffling, again...
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 09:17:36 +0200

Hi james, ruth and other list members,

That is interesting work you do there at the NHS, Ruth. In a way you could
say that you apply Deleuze's work in your occupational business. So far I
have not yet come, since I wonder, how, working there - would you see a
difference between a patient you treat, an actual human being - and a Body
without Organs?

I think it is very hard to conclude to such a piece-meal difference, and I
get the impression that there is something more to that. When we look, for
example at the work of Dr.Schreber and we relate that to that which is done
by Deleuze & Guattari themselves, I miss some kind of fourth component, i
would like to know more about that, reading Deleuze and Guattari. For those
who read, besides English and German, Dutch I would recommend my personal
web page on philosophy, on which some articles can be found on these
affairs: http://home.wanadoo.nl/wku/Philosophy/filowaan.htm

What I would not like, then, is the bitty sense of humour, the mocking on
you with neologisms, etc. For those I would recommend reading the more
bearable stuff when that would be allowed in-there, and for instance, try to
smuggle in, Thomas Pynchon's work: Gravity's Rainbow, and see how he
elaborates on those days. For NHS workers who separate suffereres from
psychosis from their enivironmet, i would wonder why in-there the more heavy
books reading-them, are frowned upon with some suspicion.

wku, have a nice day

> hi charles, good to hear from you. i take your point about
> recognition. i would find it a source of some humour if we
> suddenly had a rush of 'great minds' identifying themselves as
> such. time committments always an issue. what are you up to these
> days? i'm now an independent training consultant for the NHS
> (national health service)and coordinate Psychosis Revisited- a
> workshop that assimilates the medical model of 'illness' as only
> one leg on the stool of stability-that is there is the pills only
> work for one third of people who experience psychosis. So lots of
> emphasis on different kinds of intervention and listening to
> psychotic expereinces as sensible texts that have yet to be
> understood ( minor languages in other words).  the field is way
> too conservative to even mention D and G but the training is
> pretty saturated with bits and pieces masqerading under more
> conventional headings. there's a lot of service users involved in
> delivery so having great fun getting people to put down their
> risk assessments and actually collaborate with people
> expereincing psychosis. i think guattari would have liked it-or i
> hope he would have as there's a lot of multi-media art involved
> and we've just published our first neologism for reflecting on
> internal states experienced outside the body. D and G gone
> anonymous in other words. i hope they would have appreciated the humour.
>
> take care ruth.c
> Ruth.C


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