Madness and Paranoia

Abstract

In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari interpret the paranoia of Judge Schreber as an exhibition of a storehouse of protofascist fantasies. They criticize Freud for neglecting to take into account the ideological social context in his analysis of Schreber’s paranoia. Although they are sympathetic to the transgressiveness of Schreber’s delusions, they do not make him out to be an exemplary case of schizoanalytic practice, which was subversive and resistant to the fascist regime of Nationalist Socialism. Franz Kafka is given exemplary credit for such literary practice. Yet, as Santner (1996) humorously notes in his study of Schreber, “one should not, as they say, try this at home” (144), meaning that the price Schreber paid to come to terms with the fascism of his time was high; it cost him his mental health. For Santner, it was precisely Schreber’s identification with his symptom as a refusal of the symbolic power and authority of fascism when he was writing his Memoirs that enabled him to stave off psychological death. While Santner makes his own evaluation of Freud’s interpretation of Schreber (see chapter 2) and examines the myriad of Oedipal connections, he is much more generous in his study in regarding the way Schreber resisted fascism through his paranoia than Deleuze and Guattari are. For all intents and purposes, Schreber’s Memoirs are a form of schizo writing in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms.