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One of Deleuzes Bergsonisms

Rossen Ventzislavov City College of New York

Abstract

In this article I attempt to reveal some continuities between the anti-psychoanalytic stance adopted by Gilles Deleuze in his later work andHenri Bergsons early philosophy. On account of these continuitiesI hope to provide a glimpse into what I believe is a century-old tangentof philosophical resistance to the methods and theories of Freudianpsychoanalysis. In order to achieve this, I start with a brief meditationon the challenges and benefits of cross-generational inheritance andcollaboration in philosophy. The purpose of this is twofold to exploresome general conditions for such collaboration and to tease out someof the implications of these conditions for the substantive argument myspecific reading of Bergson via Deleuze occasions. I then expound onBergsons theory of duration and some of the uses to which Deleuzeputs it in the latter part of his career. In this I outline several fecundsimilarities between Bergsons critique of associationism and Deleuzesattack on Freud. Finally, I attempt a partial evaluation of Freudianpsychoanalysis from the joint, albeit naturally disjointed, perspective ofmy primary sources.

Keywords: Bergson, Deleuze, Freud, anti-psychoanalysis

I. Creating and Inheriting Insight

It is not clear whether philosophy unveils knowledge which is alreadythere or whether it creates new knowledge. One clue to an answer maylie in the historical fact that philosophers talk and write about otherphilosophers. This fact can be considered of some evidential value to

Deleuze Studies 5.3 (2011): 340357DOI: 10.3366/dls.2011.0025 Edinburgh University Presswww.eupjournals.com/dls

One of Deleuzes Bergsonisms 341

the supposition that philosophising is more about elaborating on priorknowledge than about inventing. But, then, how obscure and in need ofcommentary can a thinkers writing be? Why do we so often need oneperson to reveal and expound on the tenets of another persons thinking?If we prefer to be charitable to the predecessor figure in general, wecould say that his/her commentator simply provides an update. If, tothe contrary, we decide to give more justice to the commentator, wewill have to admit that commenting is rich with revelation; that is, ifsuccessful, it will amount to an upgrade.1

I hope that it will not be too much of a rhetorical stretch to say thatthe category of the new in art is to a large extent analogous to the new inphilosophy. The new, in both cases, generally presents itself as a riddle, ariddle that stops being considered new when it is solved. The solution, itis important to note, does not simply make the new riddle old, but triesto make sure the riddle is altogether no more. In art, this posing andsolving of riddles accounts for changes in artistic styles, as in the case ofPicassos distinct periods. But what if a philosopher attempts to solve hisor her own riddles? Many have tried. Descartes, for whom the idea ofa new philosophy was programmatic, is one good example of a thinkerwho wrote with a view to all potential objections that could arise fromthe direction of his critics. He thus wrote mostly backwards, not in thesense of consulting prior philosophy, but in the sense of always tryingto pre-empt any future critique of his own. The example of Descartesshows that there are thinkers whose heritage can remain mostly theirs.One is always tempted to say that philosophers who write in stone, likeDescartes, are the truly great ones. This would mean that they did thephilosophers job better than most of their colleagues. But, then again,is the philosophers profession that of a restorer or that of an inventorof knowledge? And is it not strange that we would readily admit thatDescartes was clearly a creator of new (first) philosophy, but at the sametime we recognise the antiquarian effort his oeuvre demands of Cartesianscholars?The example of Descartes gives us a better clue to answering my

initial question. There must be philosophers of both kinds those whocreate knowledge and those who dissect the knowledge passed onfrom their predecessors. There is, of course, also the salient distinctionbetween those whose heritage opens up to unpredictable discourses andthose whose philosophy comes with strict directives for future use. Notsurprisingly, any number of the four nodes of the above distinctionscould then be expected to converge in the character of any specificphilosopher. And, to make the life of the consumer of insight even

342 Rossen Ventzislavov

more difficult, many philosophers have been prone to switch betweenextreme nodes or recombine them throughout the course of their writingcareers.

II. One of Several Bergsonisms

The two philosophers I am here interested in are Henri Bergson andGilles Deleuze. They both belong to a category of difficult thinkersbecause they readily display all of the above mentioned extremes in allcombinations possible at different periods in their careers. The challengein comparing two such philosophers is that, in the common groundthey cover, they would appear too similar or too unlike on differentoccasions. With both of them at different times knowledge is in-the-making, but also ready-made; it is available to the reader, but alsoremains locked. On the positive side, we are right to expect that suchcomparison will yield productive ways of checking Bergson throughDeleuze, or vice versa. Still, in reading them there remains the salientdanger that the creativities of both our subjects taken together can atany point collide into some sort of philosophical anarchy.The special focus of my comparison will be on the sources of Deleuzes

anti-psychoanalytical discourse as found in Bergsons Time and FreeWill: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. As difficultas it is to admit of a strict continuity between the two philosopherstheories, there are many moments in both that resemble strangelycollaborative, if not derivative, efforts. In a parallel reading of Bergsonand Deleuze their similar liberal attitudes to knowledge-making andknowledge-revealing may give rise to an impression of contemporaneity.I thus prefer to see Bergson not as Deleuzes predecessor, but rather asDeleuzes co-conspirator. Concerning the ways in which Bergson can betentatively said to have influenced Deleuze there are two major thematicstrands Bergsons theory of time (which refers to duration, intensity,space and consciousness), and his theory of multiplicity (which dealswith virtuality, repetition and the body). Another distinction whichcould be made is that between Deleuzes efforts to claim Bergsonsheritage on the one hand and his incorporation of this heritage intothe process of creating fresh insights on the other. I see the values inthese distinctions not in opposition to one another, but as concurrentbranches.In terms of positioning Deleuze as Bergsons heir, the first branch

to follow would be the philosophical, analytic one of the earlier years,before and at the time of Difference and Repetition (1968). In this


work and those preceding it, Deleuze can be said to employ Bergson bymeans of quotation, trying to develop his ideas, or just using them as abackdrop. Philosophical also because at this stage Deleuze seems eagerlyengaged with prior philosophy in general, with Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche,Heidegger and many others. In the preface to Bergsonism, he boasts anintimacy with the philosophers he has written about, the result of whichis, in Deleuzes words a child, which would be his [the philosopherdiscussed] and which would at the same time be a monster (Deleuze1988: 8). One of many proofs for the relevance of the metaphor liesin the chain formed by Deleuzes treatment of Bergsons treatment ofKants doctrine of the faculties.2 This could be looked upon as Deleuzesformative period, when he gradually weaned himself away from earlierphilosophy and developed his own philosophical voice.The second branch, the one that interests me here, is the interdiscipli-

nary, inventive one, particularly as present in works like Anti-Oedipus,A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy? that is, in Deleuzescollaborations with Guattari. These works are far less analytic, far lessphilosophically correct. Here Deleuze unleashes a new Deleuzianvernacular, with concepts uniquely his own. These are arguably alsothe books whose influence has spread outside of philosophical discourse(detectable in many contemporary architects writings, in the catalogueof the Mille Plateaux record label, and so on). What makes themBergsonian is the attention they apportion to the method of intuition.It is also here that Bergsons notions of multiplicity, virtuality and thebody are mobilised for a new purpose, new to both philosophers and, inall probability, for philosophy in its totality. The innovation in questionis Deleuzes drawing out of the anti-psychoanalytic implications of Berg-sons philosophy. As a Bergsonism, this is distinct from the historicalversion manifest in the greater part of Deleuzes early work and fromthe conceptual/creative one presented in his books on cinema. Whilethese other engagements with Bergson are just as valuable, and oftendraw on the same sources, the anti-Oedipal Bergsonism I am concernedwith here is much less explored. My extraction of a new virtual dialoguebetween Bergson and Deleuze on a new topic thus aims at making twocontributions first, to honour the two philosophers creative approachto reading philosophy and, second, to carve out a place for a particularBergsonism which merits further attention.

III. Bergsons Playing Field

In the conclusion of Time and Free Will, Bergson attempts to recapitulatethe points he has made about duration and its informing connection


to free will. Throughout the essay Bergson has avoided recognising thepossibility of any layering of consciousness. While consciousness is onthe agenda, there is a specific angle from which it is looked at, thatof psychophysics. All talk of the intensity of conscious states thereforeassumes a flat conscious plane rather than a mass of layered bricks.Moreover, according to Bergson any spatial model of consciousness,(be it Leibnizs pre-established harmony between conscious states andextended objects, or Bergsons own vignette of the invisible musicianplaying behind the scenes while the actor strikes a keyboard the keys ofwhich yield no sound, is doomed to assume more than is scientificallyprovable (Bergson 2001: 147). Bergson does not deny the existence ofthe unconscious and all things associated with the Freudian picture. Hejust marginalises them and the possible ways of classifying them to thespeculative edges of inquiry.3

The important pre-Deleuzian move in the conclusion of Time and FreeWill is Bergsons criticism of the associationist conception of the mind.The latter is often mentioned in the book as an outcome of the theory ofpsychological determinism concerning the causal concatenation betweensuccessive states of consciousness (Bergson 2001: 148, 155). WhatBergson has against such theory turns out to be analogous to whatDeleuze would later reject in Freudian psychoanalysis. The mistakea determinist makes is to establish a causal link between physicalmovement and conscious states. Even more fatally, a determinist of theassociationist type would claim that one conscious state causes the nextsuch state immediately following.What this implies, according to Bergson, is that the workings of

consciousness are indeed traceable, pseudo-kinetic. He realises that withassociationism what is apparently true is taken for scientifically correct.A state of determination about any action does seem to follow froma previous state of consciousness where the object of determinationshaped up, but we cannot fully know the extent to which one causesthe other. Experience shows, Bergson points out, that many times weare sure of what we are going to do in a certain situation where actionis called for, but we like to keep wondering what the best way to actwould be. In this and other ways, there can be states of consciousnessstrangely inconsequential for the ones immediately following. To nosurprise, Bergsons verdict is that associationism is another example ofthe confusion between temporal and spatial terms. In his conclusion, hewrites: Intensity, duration, voluntary determination, these are the threeideas which had to be clarified by ridding them of all that they owe tothe intrusion of the sensible world and, in a word, to the obsession of theidea of space (Bergson 2001: 224). The way space talk creeps into the


associationists discussion of consciousness is through the inappropriateadmission of a homogeneous medium of psychic states. It is far easier todistinguish psychic states from one another against an imaginary screenof distribution of psychic functions. However, Bergson cautions thatthis is not only pre-scientific, it is also dangerously unfaithful to theobservable phenomena themselves. It is a case of what he calls subs-tituting the symbol of the ego for the ego itself (Bergson 2001: 226).Bergsons whole theory of duration is aimed against such habitualsubstitutions. Duration, for him, has two completely different lives intheory and in actuality, lives that are compatible only if and to the extentthat theory has the humility to curb its findings at a safe distance fromthe hope of general application.There is a traceable line of thought in Bergson that seems to connect

his major philosophical concerns, or at least paves a way conspicuouslythrough the plethora of his creations. This line comes in his extensivework on duration but also in other different arguments, like an avenuechaining distinct city blocks, but uniformly, as a healthy obsession.It can be broadly defined as the recognition of false substitution inphilosophy of the easy for the difficult. The sense in which the lattertwo terms are used here is that of extremes on a line where commonsense occupies the middle point. It is only of minor interest to Bergsonto bestow ethical judgements upon anyones choice of position along theline. The easy is not necessarily condemnable, the difficult is not alwayscommendable. Whenever Bergson chooses one over the other he does itonly to demonstrate the fact that they are clearly distinct. What I herecall the easy is science and the faculties of abstraction associated withit. The difficult is metaphysics, a meta-something-or-other that dislodgesphilosophy from the empirically inescapable.In Bergsons theory of duration in particular, both physics and

metaphysics are given their share. It is only fair to have both; hebelieves that space and time are inherently problematic because oftheir easy surrender to common sense, which in its turn is largelyinadequate in dealing with them. Common sense is the turning point,the place where the mistake of space/time substitution takes place.This is why for Bergson metaphysics was born with the articulation ofZenos paradoxes. A simple phenomenon like motion is there treated asspatially discrete by science and as spatially indeterminate by commonsense. Only metaphysics can and should, according to Bergson, treatmotion as what it is a full and mobile experience (Bergson 1968: 17).As the philosopher makes clear in his The Creative Mind, science hasalways looked for positive attributes in space and not time. Since science


struggles to foresee, it can only focus on time passed, not time unfurling.Consequently, it is the calling of metaphysics to clear knowledge ofspatial metaphor and restore duration as the unceasing creation, theuninterrupted upsurge of novelty that it is (Bergson 1968: 17).A peculiar theoretical spillage occurs when traditional scientific

analysis becomes blind to the differences of the ontological values ofkind vs. degree, quality vs. quantity, duration vs. space, psychophysicalentity vs. the symbol for it. Bergson points out that general ideas (bethey easy, difficult, or commonsensical) are most often thought of withina homogeneous medium like space. The main reason for this is thepromise of order that spatiality gives and always seems to deliver. It is,for instance, a consequence of this symbolism of science that perceptionis regarded as incapable of registering duration (Bergson 1968: 18). Tocounter this, Bergson reminds us that the alleged failure of perception issuch only if duration is analytically chopped up into regular successivepieces. In Deleuzes words, duration is in no way indivisible, but is thatwhich cannot be divided without changing in nature at each division(Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 483). Again, perception and consciousnessin general are nowhere properly apart from duration except withintheory. In the case of the associationists view of consciousness, Bergsonnotices the same error in replacing the concrete phenomenon whichtakes place in the mind by the artificial reconstruction of it and,ultimately, of confusing the explanation of the fact with the fact itself(Bergson 2001: 163). Bergson points out that the latter mistake wasfirstly made by Kant and then inherited by the associationists (Bergson2001: 232). To round off a historical polemic, it is my purpose here toshow how a mistake of a similar kind was committed by Sigmund Freudand duly criticised by Deleuze.

IV. Anti-Oedipus and Bergson

As a Bergsonian, that is, as a difficult philosopher in his own right,Deleuze has his own just claim to metaphysical innovation. In spite ofits originality, Difference and Repetition reads as if it has picked upwhere Bergsons theory of duration had left off. It is not difficult (andI hope not presumptuous) to trace Deleuzes conception of differenceback to Bergsons picture of pure duration. For one thing, since mypresent interest lies elsewhere, it can be noted that both Difference andRepetition and Time and Free Will work towards restoring the meta inmetaphysical. The later Deleuze has a very different plan for philosophy.


In collaboration with Guattari he opens an anti-psychoanalyticaldiscourse which, through multiple series of philosophical manoeuvres,connects to aesthetic theory, a new critique of capitalism, and a newperspective on anthropology.4 If all this sounds strangely ambitious evenfor a two-headed philosopher, we have to be reminded of how muchBergson attempted and accomplished on his own. The question of whatGuattari did for Deleuze, however tangential for the present inquiry, isfor me as important as that of what Deleuze contributes to Bergson.Judging by the primary sources, if Bergson had had the choice of writingin collaboration with any one of his contemporaries it would have beeneither Sigmund Freud or Albert Einstein. The first, because consciousnesswas always on Bergsons agenda, and the second because science ingeneral and duration in particular were of major concern to him. SinceBergson did have his try at Einstein with Duration and Simultaneity, itremains a mystery what would have become of a potential encounterbetween Bergson and Freud. Deleuze, with Guattaris help, steps in tolay bare the possible dynamics of such an encounter.In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze discusses what he calls the

image of thought, an inaugural perpetuum mobile, a mechanism ofhonorific assignments which are bestowed upon the practices of thinkingand knowledge. Here he also offers his answer to the question weasked at the outset: Does philosophy update or upgrade knowledge? ForDeleuze, philosophy most often does the first but ought to do the second.The philosophers predicament is to fall prey to common sense, themiddle ground, a safe place. But common sense shows every day . . . thatit is capable of producing philosophy in its own way (Deleuze 1994:135). In Deleuzes opinion, this is where the Cartesian cogito comesfrom, a general idea of good sense that appeals to the mundanelyundeniable. Thus, if there is Descartes the doctor scientiae, who looksfor philosophy-as-principle, there is also Descartes the folk thinker, whoappeals to the age-old recognition of thought-as-law.According to Deleuze, the symbolic gesture of the Cartesian cogito

is far surpassed in brashness by Deleuzes arch-enemy Freud and histheory of the unconscious. If it is not altogether safe to say that Deleuzesanger towards Freud comes from the same place as Bergsons angerwith the associationists (however much we are inclined to recognise anaffinity of affective character between the two respective attitudes), itseems true enough that Freuds obsession with Oedipus commits theassociationists error of substitution. In the two volumes of Capitalismand Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari5 break into the theatrical stageset of the Freudian unconscious. What displeases them in their findings


is the predatory backwardness of Freuds reliance on common sense andthe aggressive spatiality of the Oedipal model.The most direct attack on Freud in the entire two-volume project of

Capitalism and Schizophrenia is found in the second book under the titleOne or Several Wolves? This short chapter restages the famous case ofFreuds Wolf-Man as a failure of Oedipal dramaturgy. The patient inquestion, Sergei Pankejeff, is represented through a series of psychoticepisodes whose meaning Freud believed he had deciphered. The finalityof a cure, in Freud, is argued to be a function, and in this case thefelicitous outcome, of such meaning extraction. The process that leadsFreud to such a declaration, of a method and its success, is not farfrom literary analysis after all, on some level the Wolf-Mans psychoticepisodes are stories, and we should not forget that Oedipus was oncejust a story, too. Deleuze alludes to the latter fact by introducing hischapter with the fictive statement That day, the Wolf-Man rose fromthe couch particularly tired (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 26). But arethese merely stories and are they as unequivocally transposable as Freudbelieves? Starting out with Pankejeffs dream of six or seven wolves,with the help of Freuds retroactive dramatic apparatus, the plot, so tospeak, thickens to accommodate the inclusion of kid goats, an episodeof inadvertent voyeurism, two dogs, and, ultimately, the castration ofthe patients father.6 This reduction, according to Deleuze, commitsthe cardinal sin of replacing a dynamic multiplicity with a persistentsingularity. Wolves, as Deleuze reminds us, come in packs not in thesense that wolves always come in groups operating on a common planeor with a common purpose, but in the sense that the generic for wolfpresupposes a multiplicity, even when used in the singular.Deleuzes concept of multiplicity here is partially borrowed from both

Bergson and Riemann. From Bergson comes the distinction betweennumerical or extended multiplicities and qualitative or durationalmultiplicities (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 33). For Deleuze, thepatients pack of wolves belongs to both categories. The significance ofthe above distinction between different multiplicities for the Freudianpicture is that it renders Freuds numerical fragment of a lost Unity orTotality suspect (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 32). Even in a numericalmultiplicity there is never simply the One, a lone signifier, a father andso on. Instead, there are accumulations of singularities, momentarilydiscernible and even countable but, also, ever-shifting. The pack ofwolves seems the perfect model for this resistance to unity that Deleuzeposits it makes little sense to speak of the leader of a pack, of the centreof a pack, of the pack at all.


The One, on the other hand, emerges as a fiction of singularity, anindividual whose name is in constant danger of being edged out by anew one that better fits the story. The impression of a happy end is setin motion by the healthy transition of the Wolf-Man back into SergeiPankejeff, when purportedly cured. But such neat reversal, as Deleuzepoints out, is impossible if the patient and his ailment have become manyand, as the (hi)story goes, have sucked all manner of subsequent doctorsand treatments into the natural loop of their multiplication.7

As to the second kind of multiplicity, Deleuze insists that it is notthe other side of a duality but rather the intensification of all processesof re-distribution, re-mapping and de-individualisation characteristicof numerical multiplicity. The Freudian unconscious is, for Deleuze,a prime example of this intensive multiplicity. And, consequently,where Freud sees an individual Deleuze sees a crowd. Singularitypresupposes a negation, a lack of some sort, by virtue of which itaccommodates repression, while for Deleuze the unconscious knowsnothing of negation (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 31). Going back tothe Wolf-Mans psychotic episodes, if they are read the Freudian way,making sense of them surely gains something from the substitutionof a familial theatre for a schizoid multiplicity. But the editorial effortinvolved is clearly arbitrary and what remains on the cutting-room floormight just turn out to be the ever-changing story itself.It is interesting that in Freud the normative seems to prey on the

phenomenological. Even in name, things such as a bad dream, anightmare and a psychotic episode have a built-in normative charge.If one should inquire into the difference between a dream and a baddream, Freud is very likely to offer an explanation that, firstly, posits adifference in kind between the two phenomena (rather than degree, orintensity as Deleuze will have it), and, secondly, will bestow differentvalences to each phenomenon relative to the degree to which each oneconforms to the analysts valuative system. Deleuze detects the sameprocedure in Freuds differentiation between neurosis and psychosis, anoperation that starts out as a promising analysis of intensive multiplicity,possibly even the greatest art of the unconscious, but soon after getsbogged down by the Freudian reductive procedure (Deleuze and Guattari1998: 27). As to the normative charges implied, Keith Ansell Pearsoncontributes a great observation on the continuity between Bergson andDeleuze in opposition to Freud: This explains Bergsons interest inthe anomalies of the life of spirit, one that will come to informDeleuzes analyses in the two Cinema books, such as deliriums, dreams,hallucinations, and so on, which, Bergson insists, are positive facts


that consist in the presence, and not in the absence, of something:They seem to introduce into the mind certain new ways of feelingand thinking (Ansell Pearson 2005: 5). Freudian reduction, however,makes no provision for such positive facts, which undermines Freudsclaims to both an understanding of the meanings of these phenomenaand to possible convalescence through psychoanalytic transference.If we take a step back to Bergson, we could recall that for him any

scientific model is based on the notion of space. Freud, however, recoilsfrom the possibility of becoming a scientist. His magnitudes, sectionsof the human psyche, do not even properly measure the unconsciousbut merely subordinate it to a theoretical master plan: Freud himself,as Deleuze notes, recognises the multiplicity of libidinal currents thatcoexist in the Wolf-Man:

That makes it all the more surprising that he treats the multiplicities of theunconscious the way he does. For him, there will always be a reduction tothe One: the little scars, the little holes, become subdivisions of the great scaror supreme hole named castration; the wolves become substitutes for a singleFather who turns up everywhere, or wherever they put him. (Deleuze andGuattari 1998: 31)

Bergson sees Freudian psychoanalysis (in theory and practice) asevidence for the existence of an integral conservation of the past onthe threshold between science and common sense (Bergson 1968: 889).What he means by this are the above mentioned tendencies of scienceto focus predominantly on what has passed and the things of commonsense on things extended in space. Thus, the hybrid tangible pastsubsists as a constant point of reference in psychoanalysis. It is curious,or perhaps only to be expected, that Deleuze distinguishes a functionof memory which he calls the conservational and associates with anypickled memories that work towards a relocation of the self into the past(Deleuze 1994: 803). It would be only fair to note here that the Oedipalpast shares some traits of the Bergsonian (and Deleuzian) past, mostimportantly its ontological value. For both Freud and his two critics thepast is, it subsists, it is never lost, it is an everpast. The major difference,however, is that the access to it is furnished in different ways in Freudon the one hand and in the two French philosophers on the other.For Freud, the unconscious represents a record inscribed on the

psyche, it is rewritten every moment, but always remains the same.What keeps an eye on the process is the Ego, an unwelcome answer tothe Bergsonian present, the Deleuzian body without organs. The bodywithout organs is a locus of becoming, the home of multiplicity, and the


repudiation of organic unity. Both the Ego and the body without organsare now, never two minutes ago or tomorrow. Even though Deleuzerarely writes of the body without organs in temporal terms, what hewrites has a recognisable parallel to Bergsonian duration. The bodywithout organs performs an ousting of the past, it makes a differencefrom the past the way in Bergson pure duration involves the aforemen-tioned upsurge of novelty at every stage. In one place, Deleuze explainsthat the body without organs is what remains when we take everythingaway (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 151). Deleuze qualifies this sugges-tion by making an important distinction proper organisms performthe connective syntheses of production while the body without organstakes care of the disjunctive synthesis of recording (Deleuze and Guat-tari 1983: 12). The past is available to the body without organs throughaberrant paths of communication between non-communicating vessels,transverse unities between elements that retain all their differenceswithin their own particular boundaries (Deleuze and Guattari 1983:43). There is a record, but it is inconstant; the past is a body that con-tinuously changes, the way in Bergson matter is subject to continuousalteration. In the process of becoming which encompasses all of dura-tion, space, and body for Bergson and Deleuze the present is the truepsychological existence, a present, as it were, untouched by the past ex-cept through the alterity of selective memory and an impetus for action.Freud reserves the present for the Ego, the corrector of the past.

When he asserts that the Ego is the coherent organisation of mentalprocesses he admits the possibility of such organisation after the fact(Freud 1999: 17). It is but a small step from here to the associationistsspatial model of consciousness. Space, for Bergson and even morefor Deleuze, is the stuff of conquest and regularity. Deleuze criticisesFreud severely for his letting the Ego supervene over the unconscious.The symbolism of riders-whipping-horses, the present becoming anexcuse for past trauma, the layering of the psyche, presuppose a jumpbetween simultaneity and space. The memory of the past for Freud isnot selective, but solid; it does not call for action, but for retrogradepsychosis. The subdivisions of the psyche (Ego, Id, Ego Ideal, and soon) line up in a strict hierarchy where everything follows neatly fromeverything else. It is a theatre, a place rather than a time.

V. Oedipus Unravelling

The Freudian theatre is very aptly demystified by George Dimockin his Anna and the Wolf-Man: Rewriting Freuds Case History


(1995). In his article Dimock revisits the Wolf-Mans case through thedouble lens of the patients late life memoirs and also of scholarshipon the case after Freud. From these texts there emerges considerableevidence that Freuds reading of the patients neurosis was markedby an unproductive tendency to over-simplify and twist the patientsvariegated past experience. Following clues from Pankejeffs life story astold by Pankejeff himself, Dimock reinstates the patients sister, Anna,as a key presence and possibly a key psychological determinant in thedevelopment of the Wolf-Mans disorder.The first and seemingly least reliable clue Dimock pursues is a

childhood photograph of the patient with his sister. Even in thisdubious piece of evidence Dimock is inclined to find a peculiar filialbond indicative of co-dependency and, possibly, salient neurosis. Thephotograph, one among a few that Dimock discusses and reproduces,exemplifies the highly stylised but deliberate approach of turn-of-the-century family portraiture. The tight conventions it follows, however,make the accidental and the personal all the more indicative of thepsychological dimension, which the sitters apparently share. Dimockadmits that the photograph can only be used as a metaphorical tool itsundeniable presence does not constitute immediate fodder for analysisbut it can very well be used, together with the other photographsreproduced, in considering alternatives to Freuds analytic conclusions.The shared psychological dimension in question is one that Dimock

calls the interpersonal, which he opposes to the introspective. Theinterpersonal is where the entire history of the Wolf-Mans life branchesout to include other actual persons (family, friends, a nanny andthe larger population), their relevant experiences, and the subjectivecomplications they occasion for each other and, of course, for theanalysand. The introspective, on the other hand, refers to the subjectiveexperiences to which each of us has privileged access. At this stage ofhis discussion Dimock introduces another parallel distinction throughthe words of Pankejeff himself: The Wolf-Man proclaims that whathe writes is something like a short family novel, which favoursthe epic over the sentimental or the theatrical.8 The epic hereassumes a parallel function to Dimocks interpersonal dimension, whilethe theatrical is associated with the introspective. At first glance thislooks like a curious reversal of the Deleuzian sense of Freuds familytheatre the latter, after all, is seen by Deleuze as what amounts to acalcified interpersonal diorama. Dimock, however, makes it the purposeof his essay to show that Freuds dioramas assume an interpersonaldimension but fall short of following through with the theoretical


and practical demands this dimension makes of psychoanalysis. Togo back to Dimocks photographic examples, the images undeniablyrepresent the relevant stage sets on which respective interpersonalconfluences are played out. Each photograph, however, is also markedlyresistant to psychoanalytic interpretation just because it is not, byitself, a complete signifier its claim to dramatic importance is bothreinforced and undermined by its belonging to the enormous variety ofepisodes, attitudes and simultaneities which constitute the larger familyepic.For Freud, on the other hand, the family epic and its persistent

percolations into the patients psyche remain mostly out of reach.Dimock cites Freuds indirect apology for not having provided a fullerpicture, but as Dimock notices this is not necessarily Freuds majormisstep it is rather the tendentiously static reading of Pankejeffs lifethat distorts Freuds search and the findings thereof. Freuds processof critically selecting bits of the narrative and endowing them withspecial significance must have been completely arbitrary if he ignoredso much of the Wolf-Mans history.9 By way of proof, Dimock makesa convincing case that the Oedipal theatre is just one of many dramaticstencils that fit the bill. He finds fast connections between Pankejeffsintrospective reports and the cultural reality the patient grew up in. Itis thus that Tolstoys wolf-hunt scene and the subsequent reconciliationbetween brother and sister inWar and Peace constitutes a rival narrativethat, if transposed on Pankejeffs neurotic episodes, promises tohelp explain much more than Freuds trusty Oedipus ever would(Dimock 1995: 67).For the literary to become literal, one has to have a particularly

conservative approach to story-telling and story-making. Freudsapproach is to look for scraps of Oedipus in the ruins of his patientslife the Wolf-Man also has a suicidal sister and an erotically chargednanny, but Freud remains content with regarding such actors assuperfluous to the real drama of the Oedipal triangle. Another symbolictriangle that of the number three mentioned by the patient, whichFreud eagerly and entirely speculatively attributes to Pankejeffs pre-conscious memory of witnessing his parents engage in intercourse threetimes, might just as well be related to the three wolves that appearin a photograph of Pankejeff and other family members after, yetagain, a wolf hunt. The psychoanalysts ambition to make sense of apsychological ailment begins to look unrealistic against the plentifulmuddle of such associative clusters. A possible way out is suggested butnot properly theorised by the Wolf-Man himself.


What does the patient mean when he says that his memoirs favourthe epic over the theatrical? One reading, as offered by Dimock, is theimperative of telling the whole story without the convenient omissionsso typical of Freuds editorial approach to trauma and drama. Anotherinterpretation, which does not contradict Dimocks but builds on it,comes from the work of Bergson and Deleuze. The metaphysical mistakeof attributing spatial features to durational phenomena is very useful indeciphering Pankejeffs suggestion. If theatre is understood as a space,or at least the possibility of re-enacting the same story, Freuds fixationwith applying the dramatic arch of Oedipus Rex to all and sundrypsychological signposts constitutes an intrusion of a spatial model upona variety of durational occurrences. (One does not need to be remindedof Giulio Camillos memory theatre to be able to recognise the mixedblessing of tampering with the lived structure of mnemonic experience orany experience whatever. Camillos claim that the memory theatre willmake it possible for anyone to converse with the erudition of a Cicerobelongs to the same utopian genre as Freuds ambition to make sense ofman, survival, and civilisation all on the purported force of a universallyapplicable theatrical stencil.) The epic, on the other hand, is at leastsuperficially easier to identify with the Bergsonian/Deleuzian notion ofintensive multiplicity the epic is most often a long literary work whichrelates a significant story in all aspects of its unfolding; it also representsa battlefield upon which literary licence and historical accuracy nevercease to fight. Most importantly, however, the family epic Pankejeffchooses to write becomes, with its intensive multiplicity of actors, scenesand episodes, the most faithful representation of the factors that theWolf-Mans unconscious is ever so mysteriously predicated on. Thisdoes not mean that the Wolf-Man himself would, just by writing thestory, acquire the coveted clarity about these factors and the workingsof his own unconscious but writing the story anew does reconfirm thedurational character of both neurosis and life, in short, of all mannersof becoming.Like Bergsons begrudged associationists Freud believes that by

locating the coherence between disparate mental phenomena one isafforded an easy, commonsensical, objective way out of, and never into,becoming. As Bergson himself ingeniously puts it, this actual and notmerely virtual perception of subdivisions in what is undivided is justwhat we call objectivity (Bergson 2001: 83). Coherence is the promiseof objectivity, of the divisible truth, the conquerable psyche. Accordingto Deleuze, these tendencies are all the fault of humanitys obsession withunity, the wish to step outside of oneself and look back at oneself with


an air of Kantian disinterestedness. Both Bergson and Deleuze believethat such detachment from and spatial appropriation of different aspectsof mental life is often inescapable, but always harmful.10 They bothbelong to the species of philosophers Deleuze calls doctores angelici,abortionists of unity and angel makers (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 6).In contrast, the associationists make determinist machines and Freudinvents the theatre of stasis. Or, perhaps, they do not even inventanything but only reproduce the script and the mistakes of some priorstory.

VI. The Riddle of the New

The preceding philosophical worries, if granted the interest andvalidity I would claim for them, yield an important meta-philosophicalconsequence. The consequence I refer to is that Freuds reading ofhis patients story finds its place within my discussion not only withreference to the work of Bergson and Deleuze, but also with referenceto the broader methodological context of Deleuzes manner of readingFreud via Bergson. Within the latter context, Freud seems to occupyan unenviable place on the continuum between creating insight andinheriting it. What Freud chooses to learn from his patients story isprecisely what fits his own intellectual and narrative constructs prior toever meeting the patient. This resistance to novelty is neatly mirroredin Freuds substantive theory itself. Deleuzes misgivings, via Bergson,about the stagnant spatialisation of the Oedipal model seem to be, inpart, misgivings about Freuds reactionary brand of interpretation. Onlythrough such limited interpretation does it become possible for Freudto declare therapeutic success where there is none a success whichregisters more as an act of appropriation than as an act of understanding.Ultimately, the Wolf-Mans psychological inscriptions are redacted sothat they can be folded neatly into the jealous inheritance of the self-contained Freudian scroll.This approach is the exact opposite of how Deleuze engages with

Bergsons heritage. In his application of Bergsonian notions of duration,multiplicity and becoming to his anti-psychoanalytic project Deleuzesimultaneously honours Bergsons insight and writes it anew. As anexample of referring to a past, be it in psychoanalysis or its philosophicalcounterpart, what Deleuze does mirrors the theoretical underpinningsof Bergsons theory just as Bergson insists on the dynamic natureof the pasts continuous redrawing, Deleuze insists on the dynamicreconsideration of prior thought. The possibility of reading Freud


through Bergson is undoubtedly one that Deleuze creates. Among thevirtues of taking such a licence is that it opens the way for subsequentcommentators to multiply the particular chain of interpretation evenfurther.

Notes1. Update is here used in the sense of a restorers effort, while upgrade is

associated with the work of the inventor.2. Kants doctrine of the faculties was apparently influenced by Leibnizs idea of

pre-established harmony. In his Kants Critical Philosophy Deleuze picks upon Kants fascination with Leibnizian harmony and tries to show that Kantsenhancement of Leibnizs meaning has the limitation of allowing apriority tosuffocate the free accord of the faculties (cf. Deleuze 1993: 224). It is in noway bizarre that a similar treatment of the same topic lurks behind Bergsonsexposition in Time and Free Will.

3. One emblematic mention of the unconscious in Bergson is found in his Matterand Memory: And we have expressed how the cerebral lesion may effect thisweakening, without the necessity of supposing any sort of provision of memoriesstored in the brain. What the injury really attacks are the sensory and motorregions corresponding to this class of perception, and especially those adjunctsthrough which they may be set in motion from within, so that memory, findingnothing to catch hold of, ends by becoming practically powerless: now, inpsychology, powerlessness means unconsciousness (Bergson 1988: 176).

4. Deleuze and Guattaris attempt to reserve a genre slot for their contributionto philosophy reads: RHIZOMATICS= SCHIZOANALYSIS= STRATO-ANALYSIS=PRAGMATICS=MICROPOLITICS. To this, a page later theyadd POP ANALYSIS (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 224).

5. May any omission of Guattaris name with reference to the two works not beregarded by the reader as discounting Guattaris contribution, but as a matter ofmere brevity.

6. This operation is accomplished by associating the dream with the tale, TheWolf and the Seven Kid-Goats (only six of which get eaten). We witness Freudsreductive glee; we literally see multiplicity leave the wolves to take the shape ofgoats that have absolutely nothing to do with the story. Seven wolves that areonly kid-goats. Six wolves: the seventh goat (the Wolf-Man himself) is hiding inthe clock. Five wolves: he might have seen his parents make love at five oclock,and the roman numeral V is associated with the erotic spreading of a womanslegs. Three wolves: the parents may have made love three times. Two wolves:the first coupling the child may have seen was the two parents more ferarum, orperhaps even two dogs. One wolf: the wolf is the father, as we all knew from thestart. Zero wolves: he lost his tail, he is not just a castrater but also castrated.Who is Freud trying to fool? (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 28).

7. [I]t is at the highest point of this depersonalisation that someone can benamed, receives his or her family name or first name, acquires the most intensediscernibility in the instantaneous apprehension of the multiplicities belongingto him or her, and to which he or she belongs (Deleuze and Guattari 1998: 35).

8. Whatever else these terms may signify, they point away from introspectiontoward the interpersonal, away from psychoanalysis toward the broader socialand historical arena (Dimock 1995: 54).


9. With respect to the full range of human experience, a single dream at fouryears of age and its latent content, a primal scene at one and a half, cannotbe presented as inexhaustibly meaningful without becoming narratologicallyoppressive by virtue of what they exclude from consideration. Freudspsychoanalytic drama leaves no room for, among other things, intersubjectivityin the form of family history. The Wolf-Mans memoirs address, howeverinadequately, the casualties of this exclusion (Dimock 1995: 59).

10. In Bergsons discussion of free will, we read: But the moments at which we thusgrasp ourselves are rare, and that is just why we are rarely free. The greater partof the time we live outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselvesbut our own ghost, a colourless shadow which pure duration projects intohomogeneous space. Hence our life unfolds in space rather than in time; welive for the external world rather than for ourselves; we speak rather than think;we are acted rather than act ourselves (Bergson 2001: 231).

ReferencesAnsell Pearson, Keith (2005) The Reality of the Virtual: Bergson and Deleuze,

MLN, 120:5, pp. 111227.Bergson, Henri (1968) The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison. Westport,CT: Greenwood Press, Publishers.

Bergson, Henri (1988) Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul andWilliam Scott Palmer, New York: Zone Books.

Bergson, Henri (2001) Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data ofConsciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson. New York: Dover.

Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,New York: Zone Books.

Deleuze, Gilles (1993) Kants Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson andBarbara Habberjam, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York:Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1983) Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, MarkSeem and Helen R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1998) A Thousand Plateaus, trans. BrianMassumi, Minneapolis: Minnesota Press.

Dimock, George (1995) Anna and the Wolf-Man: Rewriting Freuds Case History,Representations, 50 (Spring), pp. 5375.

Freud, Sigmund (1999) The Ego and the Id, in The Complete Works of SigmundFreud, trans. James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, Alan Tyson, ed. JamesStrachey, Vol. XIX, London: Vintage.

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