Schizophrenics are like unstable points inside machinic circuits, thus their frequent drawings and narratives on the “influencing machines” they are, in their perception, connected to and controlled by. Generally, these “machines” reflect the technological status of the historical period in question: they can be immaterial (e.g. religious or theological) machines, mechanical machines with gears and levers, electronic machines that pass on various types of waves, etc.
Painting by Bryan Charnley
Schizophrenics lack an “I” or commanding “self” – put differently, they are not autonomous but heteronomous subjects, which means they are subjects in the sense that they are subjected to, nothing more. But the problem — the reason for which their worlds are collapsed worlds – is not that they are not autonomous, commanding subjects; in other words, their problem is not their lack of Phallus. Their problem is that there is a minimum of consistency they also lack: a “minimal self” capable of articulating their experiences as someone’s experiences – the genitive denotes here not so much possession as positional assignability. In the lack of it, their experiences fail to trace any recognisable existential territory, even provisional, and, consequently, their worlds collapse. For psychic life is modulation of consistency.
In the basis (0) there is Chaos as the source of all determinability. Qualified by its infinite speed, it is the domain of all morphogenesis. Its level of vectorisation is the lowest in comparison to the other modalities, but its possibilities are higher than in any other one. After all, one must choose: in the beginning, there is either Chaos or God: an immanent and hypercomplex reality out of which all possible worlds come out, and on whose surface they dance, finally dissolving in its depth before others emerge, or else a sole transcendent principle whose law pre-determines and governs their composition. Hesiod or the Bible — an artist or a ruler, a fool or a king.
Two steps above Chaos in the consistency scale (2), there is Rhythm — the Rhythm in which life consists. Or what, following the psychiatrist and art-historian Hans Prinzhorn, as well as Paul Klee, Jean Oury names Gestalgung rather Gestalt, “formation” rather than “form” – a movement producer of forms which is not yet form. Unquestionably, ontological consistency is higher in the level of Rhythm than in the level of Chaos, but it is not as high there as it is in the next level: the level of Forms.
(3) What is proto-vectorised in the domain of Chaos, and fluidly vectorised in the domain of life’s Rhythm, appears at the level of Forms as something fully delimited – and dangerously frozen if caution is not taken. Furthermore, it is in the level of Forms that all conflicts arise, for the domain of Forms is characterised by the formula: “either… or.” In other words, whatever compositions may eventually take place in it, these always demand selections — unlike in the domain of Rhythm, where the formula is “… and…” or something close to it, instead. Freedom, therefore, is higher in the level of Rhythm than in the level of Forms, albeit in detriment of consistency, and vice versa. Yet the former must be rigorously distinguished from the level of Chaos in two ways: first, while to everything that inhabits Chaos corresponds, as we have seen, a purely virtual status, in the domain of Rhythm things gain ontological consistency, no matter how relative and provisional it may be; secondly, while the domain of Chaos is pre-subjective, the domain of Rhythm includes a number of subjective components, however minimal they must be deemed to be. More precisely, the domain of Rhythm includes two different types of subjective components. On the one hand, a minimal or lowercase “i” accompanies all moves in it, in the sense that a minimal positional “i” is needed for any self-referential experience to occur, otherwise there would be too much discontinuity and, as a consequence, no rhythm would ever take place or be given a chance even to surface. On the other hand, certain existential territories get traced by repetition or insistence, condensation or quantitative accumulation, and crystallisation or qualitative disposition of specific positional moves; one may think of them as self-referential “folds” produced by coagulation of movable “points,” to adapt here Deleuze’s distinction between “point” and “fold” in his study on Leibniz.
In short, strategic or “positional micro-‘i’-s” and small “folded micro-‘i’-s” resulting from their recurrent articulation populate the domain of the Rhythm. What such domain (yet) lacks is any Subject. For Subjectivity and Subject are altogether different notions denoting different realities: the former is self-referential but open and flexible — it still inhabits a smooth space; the latter is striated instead, i.e. close and rigid. “Positional micro-‘i’-s” and “folded micro-‘i’-s” are the two minimal components of any Subjectivity, and they assure the possibility and the continuity of any experience. But they belong in the level of Rhythm. Conversely, with the Subject positionality becomes enclosure, and folding an excuse to build a redundant prison around a thereby-enclosed spot. If subjectivity belongs in the domain of Rhythm, the Subject belongs in the domain of Forms — the Subject itself being a redundant Form with its volume, its clear-cut contour lines, and its obsessions.
Therefore, in addition to several domains (Chaos, Rhythm, Forms), we also have various layers: a pre-subjective layer extensive to the domain of Chaos; a first, if minimally-vectorised, subjective layer coincident with the domain of Rhythm; and a second, redundant subjective layer as soon as we enter the domain of Forms. Or we have a number of Figures: Subjectivity (in the domain of Rhythm), the Subject (in the domain of Forms), and what one may call their Absence (in the domain of Chaos).
Still, it is necessary to complicate this picture by aggregating to it two supplementary levels, one above the formal domain, another one in between those of Chaos and Rhythm. How can these supplementary domains be designated, and what do they contain?
The domain placed above that of the Forms (4) ought to be called “mega-formal”; that is to say, it is the domain of a hypothetical Mega-Form invented to solve the conflicts that can arise at the level of the Forms. The monotheist God is one of such Mega-Forms, but modern notions like those of Progress, the State, and Science can substitute for it as well. In any event, what a Mega-Form does is to police any possible combination of Forms from above and, by imposing on them its transcendent law, prevent any war between them, or else declare war against those combinations deemed inappropriate. For this reason, the domain of the Mega-Form is also the domain of Judgement – the Judgement of God, the Judgement of History. Conclusion: ontological consistency turns there to be excessively compact, in fact too much to bear it.
In turn, we have chosen to name Vertigo the domain between Chaos and Rhythm (1). What happens in it? The proto-vectorised, pre-subjective forces of Chaos attempt to gain a consistency but fail to do so — put otherwise, they never make it into a Rhythm. Thus no line of consistency is attained: no preliminary subjective point manages to get articulated and no subjective fold is traced – or else, more often perhaps, they vanish after acquiring an incipient profile or after being there for a while (days, weeks, months, years). At the same time that the energy of Chaos moves upward, then, it falls into a Vertigo or an existential abyss:
Analyst(*) .– What do you see in the mirror?
Patient(**). – I don’t see you!
Analyst. – What do you see in the mirror?
Patient. – I don’t see myself!
On how to eventually escape that vertigo, see here.
(*) Jean Oury.
(**) A hebephrenic young woman called Paulette.
N. B. We have extracted the dialogue above from Jean Oury, Création et schizophrénie (Paris: Galilée, 1989), p. 23.
Drawing by Erik Baumann