Essays and articles that trace Guattari's intellectual and political
development before Anti-Oedipus.
Originally published in French in 1972, Psychoanalysis and
Transversality gathers all the articles that Félix Guattari wrote
between 1955 and 1971. It provides a fascinating account of his
intellectual and political itinerary before Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia (1972), the ground-breaking book he wrote with Gilles
Deleuze, propelled him to the forefront of contemporary French
philosophy.
Guattari's background was unlike that of any of his peers. In 1953, with
psychoanalyst Jean Oury, he founded the La Borde psychiatric clinic,
which was based on the principle that one cannot treat psychotics
without modifying the entire institutional context. For Guattari, the
purpose of "institutional psychotherapy" was not just to cure psychotic
patients, but also to learn with them a different relation to the world.
A dissident in the French Communist Party and active in far-left
politics (he participated in the May 1968 student rebellion), Guattari
realized early on that it was possible to introduce analysis into
political groups. Considered as open machines (subject-groups) rather
than self-contained structures (subjugated groups), these subject-groups
shunned hierarchy and vertical structures, developing transversally,
rhizomatizing through other groups.
Psychoanalysis and Transversality collects twenty-four essays by
Guattari, including his foundational 1964 article on transversality, and
a superb introduction by Gilles Deleuze, "Three Group-Related Problems."
