Chaosophy - autonomous learning

in the first place and then, at the other extreme, or rather at another
pole of non-sense, madness and, more precisely within the category
of madness, schizophrenia. It seemed to us that these two poles
have a connection in their common feature of non-sense. Not only
a contingent relationship which would lead to the affirmation that
modern society induces madness in human beings. Beyond that
was the recognition that, in order to account for alienation, for the
repression experienced by the individual in the grip of the capitalist
system, and, further, in order to understand the true meaning of
the politics of the appropriation of surplus value, we would have
to bring into play the same concepts that one relies upon to interpret
schizophrenia. We scrutinized these two poles, but it's clear
that all the intermediate terms must be examined as well, whether
we're talking about ways of dealing with neuroses, of studying
childhood, of examining primitive societies. All the themes dealt
with by social sciences are under scrutiny. But rather than establish
a coexistence among the social sciences, connecting one to the
other, we set out to relate capitalism and schizophrenia. So we
were seeking to embrace the whole system of fields and not merely
pass from one field to the next.
What were the concrete experiences at the base of your research, and
in what fields and by what means do you see practical results deriving
from this research
Felix Guattari: The basis is the practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis,
and more particularly, the study of psychosis. Our
impression is that the links, the descriptions, Freudian theory,
and psychiatry are all rather inadequate for dealing with what
really occurs in mental illness. This inadequacy has been discernible
recently, as a certain way of listening to mental illness has
become available.