Schizostructuralism

Book excerpt: Schizostructuralism draws together insights from psychoanalytic, structuralist, and Marxist theory, and the divisions and antagonisms that both underpin and distinguish them, to form a new psychoanalytic system. Working through the key concepts and methods in these fields, Daniel Bristow describes the processes of unification and separation inherent in structure; extends concepts within the field of psychoanalytic topology and its study of surface; and interrogates types and phasings of time that operate psychosocially, testing workings of these against analyses of class division and struggle. Returning to and working through key concepts and methods in the fields of structuralism, topology, temporality, and Marxist political theory, Schizostructuralism looks again at such major figures as Freud, Reich, Lacan, Laing, and Deleuze and Guattari—invoking their socially oriented theories and practices—and sets out possibilities for recalibrating critical and clinical approaches to be more politically radical and inclusive. Bristow draws on an array of schematic diagrams, depicting and formulating the clinical categories of neurosis, perversion, and psychosis. Schizostructuralism will be of interest to academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, Lacanian studies, and philosophy. It will also inform psychoanalysts in practice and in training.