“Wild” Freudian Psycho–Analysis: Ingestion, Incorporation, and Mourning in Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari

The characterization of psychoanalysis as “wild” is a result of a transmutation and translation of Freudian theory by way of two radical philosophical ventures, and in these respective analyses and/or accounts of psychoanalytic theory, both deconstruction (Derrida) and schizo–analysis (Deleuze and Guattari) seek to effect different sorts of resonances or refutations. The wildness of the resulting readings of Freudian psychoanalysis is exclusive to a set of fascinated approaches and aims, such that the economic structures and schemas of Freud’s theories are the central concern for Derrida, and his earliest “speculations” on Freud were largely strategic interventions and then appropriations of the primary texts for biographical material of Freud’s work and life. The reiterative gestures were replayed in deconstructive events such as The Truth In Painting, in which Derrida’s analysis of Van Gogh’s peasant shoes/boots is really a subtle recuperation of the repetition of the Thanatos/Eros combination, the Death Drive and Pleasure Principle, and, most tellingly, the fort/da movement as an econo–mimesis that is effectively an aesthetic gesture in regards to the creation of a work. I will argue that this is reminiscent of one of Freud’s stages of mourning and melancholia, where the one who has died (Other) is incorporated into the psychic body of the One (Same), and then through a healthy process of mourning, this Other body passes through the host as psychoanalytic excrement. For Deleuze and Guattari, a focus on Freud is different, as they are concerned with a series of topographical and material readings of psychoanalytical theory, positioning them in a strictly oppositional way to Freud, yet they remain closely associated with the terms of the classical movement of desire and a post–Oedipal existence which is still Oedipal in nature. Theirs is a territorial focus in terms of asserting a negative theodicy in opposition to Freud the Father, and it is also a material analysis that resurrects the schizophrenic energy out of Freud’s more sedate, post–therapeutic hysterics and neurotics. In Anti–Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari remain closely attached to the content of Freud’s texts concerning sexuality, culture, and art, yet they persist in adopting an ingestive model for the stage of mourning and melancholia where there is only ingestion but no further modification of the Other into the Same (or indigestion as ambivalent incorporation). Their descriptions of becoming and the movements of desire are all similar to the primary concerns of Freudian theory but with a different aim or objective. The Oedipal complex is defeated and replaced with the Nietzchean will and eternal return, the BwOs, and the model of the schizoid. In all cases, where desire is mapped by way of affectation in A Thousand Plateaus, as well as in What Is Philosophy, this desire is recognized and fulfilled in a final, aesthetic gesture. In much the same way, there are common threads that run through Derrida’s fascination for Freud and Deleuze and Guattari’s focused refutation of the same. However, these are also difficult to locate with any degree of clarity on a superficial level, aside from what seems to be an evident philosophical disagreement. Therefore, in this essay I will argue that the two approaches indicate two radical movements of philosophical thought or analysis that necessarily transfigure Freudian theory from its clinical, investigative, or scientific basis into something that Gregg Lambert describes as “a wild and lawless frontier” of psychoanalysis (206). The way in which I will proceed is to read the subtle but primary markers of the texts of each philosopher/analyst in order to establish a ground of theoretical clarity in relation to my proposals regarding these two approaches, followed by a brief a consideration of melancholic philosophy in relation to Freud.

In the introduction to Derrida, Deleuze, Psychoanalysis, Gabriele Schwab comments that there are “[M]any of Derrida’s reflections on the political challenge of psychoanalysis [that] converge on issues of incorporation” (as the basic idea of the Other being incorporated into the Same), which can...