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Deleuze, Freud and the Three Syntheses

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Deleuze, Freud and the Three Syntheses

Deleuze, Freud and the Three Syntheses Page

Freud’s account of repression sets up a relation between repetition and representation that mirrors Deleuze’s own:the patient does not remember anything at all of what he has forgotten andrepressed, but rather acts it out. He reproduces it not as a memory, but as an action; he repeats it, without of course being aware of the fact that he isrepeating it. (Freud 2003c: 36) Page 3

The paper examines Deleuze's reading of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, focusing on repetition. Freud's account of repression shows repetition occurring as action rather than memory, a point of relation with Deleuze.

#on/repetition #on/freud

I. The Transcendental Empiricism of Beyond the Pleasure Principle

I. The Transcendental Empiricism of Beyond the Pleasure Principle Page 4

This section introduces Freud's project in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as a transcendental inquiry into repetition.

#on/freud

Repetition and the Pleasure Principle

Repetition and the Pleasure Principle Page 4

This subsection focuses on the concept of pleasure in Freud and its relation to repetition.

#on/freud #on/pleasure-principle

Four Cases of Repetition Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Freud’s account of pleasure relates it tounannexed energy within the psychic apparatus. Essentially, we can seethe psyche as a system subjected to excitations from both inside andoutside. Insofar as these excitations threaten the stability of the psyche(traumas and shocks which the mind cannot adequately get to grips with), these excitations are interpreted by consciousness as ‘unpleasure’. A relaxation of the psyche, which involves a reduction in energy whichhas not been incorporated into the psychic system, on the contrary, isseen as involving pleasure. Page 4

Theprinciple that the psyche attempts to maximise pleasure is therefore tiedto a principle of homeostasis, the constancy hypothesis:one aspiration of the psychic apparatus is to keep the quantity of excitation present within it at the lowest possible level, or at least to keep it constant. (Freud 2003a: 47 Page 4

There are four cases of repetitionthat Freud considers. Page 5

The first of these instances is what we might call today post-traumatic stress disorder. Page 5

Since shockis experienced as unpleasure, why is it the case that those who have suffered trauma repeat these experiences in contravention of the pleasure principle? Page 5

The second is the fort-da game. In this example, Freud introduces the case of the child in the habit of throwing a wooden reel into his cot and exclaiming ‘o-o-o-o’ (which Freud interprets to mean ‘fort’, orgone), and then pulling it back and exclaiming ‘da’ (there). The child repeats this action, and derives obvious pleasure from it. How are we to explain it? Freud gives a psychoanalytical reading of it in terms of the mother. In throwing away the reel and then recalling it, the child is re-enacting the departure of the mother, and the child’s own ability to abnegate his drives, in that he is able to deal with her absence without Page 5

fuss. This explanation gives a good account of the child’s pleasure at themother’s return (the ‘da’ aspect of the game), but cannot explain whythe child takes pleasure in both aspects (the mother going away as well).Freud therefore brings in the parallel case of the child taking pleasure inthe absence of the father (who was in the military), and the fact that thechild has the mother all to himself (the game of ‘go in war!’). Now, while in either of these cases, we have somewhat satisfactory explanations ofspecific repetitions, Freud argues that together they point to the fact thatthere is a general compulsion to repeat in operation in child’s play. Page 6

The third instance is encountered in therapy. As neurosis involvesmaking the patient conscious of the unconscious elements that havebeen repressed by him, it involves bringing to light repressed experiences(bringing them into memory). Freud notes that a repressed experience enters consciousness in two forms. On the one hand, it emerges intomemory (it becomes representable), as therapy brings the experience tolight. On the other, insofar as it has not been brought into consciousness,it is played out, or repeated by the subject of therapy as if it were apresent experience. We can understand why the ego wants to repressthe experience, since bringing it to light will lead to unpleasure. Thequestion is, however, what is it that causes the drive to want to expressitself through repetition? What is it that compels this drive itself to wantto repeat itself? Page 6

Finally, we encounter repetition in everyday life regardless of neurosis.People often find themselves repeating the same situations, the same relationships, throughout their lives. In fact, the whole notion of‘character’ is grounded in the fact that there is a continuity throughout one’s life that expresses itself in the repetition of reactions to the samesituations, even when this repetition gets in the way of satisfying thepleasure principle: Page 6

We are much more strongly affected by cases where people appear to be thepassive victim of something which they are powerless to influence, and yet which they suffer again and again in an endless repetition of the same fate.(Freud 2003a: 60) Page 6

In effect, we have repetitions that seem tosurpass the explanatory power of the pleasure principle. What Freud therefore requires is an enquiry into the nature of repetition prior to the law of the pleasure principle coming into play. In effect, this will be a transcendental enquiry into the origin of bare repetition, on the surface much like Deleuze’s own. Page 7

Freud outlines his concept of pleasure as a reduction of unannexed energy, tied to the constancy hypothesis. However, he identifies four instances of repetition (trauma, fort-da, therapy, character repetition) that appear to violate the pleasure principle, suggesting a deeper compulsion to repeat exists prior to its operation.

#on/freud #on/repetition #on/pleasure-principle

The Biological Model of the Psyche and Compulsion to Repeat

for Freud, pleasure is the perceptionof a change in the level of excitation of the psyche, and as such is a conscious experience. Page 7

Freudrefers to the system responsible for perception and consciousness as the Pcpt-Cs system, and consciousness in particular as the Cs-system. Page 7

The central claim is that the fact that consciousness is located in the cerebral cortex, which is ‘at the surface of the brain’ (63), togetherwith the recapitulation theory of evolution, can allow us to explain how the pleasure principle comes into being Page 7

this organism is turned towards the world, it naturallybecomes affected by various stimuli from the outside world. As it isaffected by these various shocks, its nature changes so that it is able Page 7

to transmit them without its elements changing. This, therefore, is theorigin of consciousness. As the system evolves, it develops protectionagainst excessive stimulation from the outside by partially reverting tothe inorganic (the skull), and, in higher creatures, by separating off theperceptual aspects further (the development of particular senses). Page 8

It is not simply the case that all stimulation comes from outside the organism. The organism will also suffer disturbances from processeswithin it. Since these processes operate within the organism, the trauma produced by them cannot be reduced by the presence of a barrier, aswas the case with shocks from the outside. Traumas which affect the organism from the inside therefore have a far greater role within theeconomy of the organism than those which affect it from the outside. We can further note that the organism will tend to interpret internaltrauma as originating from the outside in order to allow its defences tobe brought into play, which leads to the notion of projection. Page 8

We can now note that as well as unbound energy, there isalso energy that forms a reservoir that can be used to deal with externalthreats to the psychic apparatus. Thus we can use energy to cathect, orannex free-flowing energy within the psychic system. Page 8

This means that the pleasure principle does not always govern theoperations of the psyche. In the case of an extreme threat to the psycheas a whole, the organism may attempt to stabilise the psychic system bysuspending the pleasure principle and instead annexing the free-flowingenergy into the system of the psyche. Page 8

compulsions torepeat simply cannot be understood according to the pleasure principle. Page 9

There are therefore two principles operative within the psyche. The first is to increase pleasure within the psychic apparatus by reducing the quantity of energy within it. This is the pleasure principle. The second is a principle that attempts to convert unbound energy into bound energy by mastering excitations.8 This is the compulsion to repeat, which will become the death drive. Freud’s claim is that it is only once excitations have been annexed by the psyche that the pleasure principle can become operative: Page 9

This would then mean that it was the task of the higher echelons of the psychic apparatus to annex excitations originating from the drives and reaching it viathe primary process. Any failure of this annexion process would bring about a dysfunction analogous to traumatic neurosis. Only when the annexion has taken place would the pleasure principle (or, once the latter has been duly modified, the reality principle) be able to assert its dominion unhindered. In the meantime, however, the psychic apparatus’s other task of controlling or annexing the excitation would be very much to the fore – not, it is true, in opposition to the pleasure principle, but independently of it, and to someextent quite heedless of it. (Freud 2003a: 75) Page 9

Freud develops a biological model of the psyche, suggesting consciousness arises from the organism's surface interacting with external stimuli. Internal stimuli pose a different challenge. He posits two principles: the pleasure principle (reducing energy) and the compulsion to repeat (binding energy/mastering excitations), which operates independently of and prior to the pleasure principle, especially under traumatic conditions.

#on/freud #on/psyche #on/compulsion-to-repeat

Beyond the Pleasure Principle and the Death Drive

Beyond the Pleasure Principle Page 9

This section delves into Freud's concept of the death drive as the ultimate explanation for the compulsion to repeat.

#on/freud #on/death-drive

Compulsion to Return and the Death Drive

By grounding the compulsion to repeat in the originalstructure of the organism, Freud has opened the possibility of analysing this compulsion as a basic function of life itself. In fact, there is touch of sleight of hand at this point in Freud’s account, as the compulsion to repeat is understood as a compulsion to return. While the compulsion to repeat can operate in accordance with the libido, it can also operate as a tendency of life itself to return to an earlier stage. Page 9

Freud characterises this tendency to return in the following terms:At this point we cannot help thinking that we have managed to identify a universal attribute of drives – and perhaps of all organic life – that has not hitherto been clearly recognized, or at any rate not explicitly emphasized.
A drive might accordingly be seen as a powerful tendency inherent in everyliving organism to restore a prior state, which prior state the organism was Page 9

compelled to relinquish due to the disruptive influence of external forces; wecan see it as a kind of organic elasticity, or, if we prefer, as a manifestation ofinertia in organic life. (Freud 2003a: 76) Page 10

The first is that the organism is defined essentially as closedoff from the world. Organic life’s engagement with the world is seen asessentially traumatic and disruptive for Freud. Second, there is the beliefthat organisms, in their particular development, tend to repeat theirdevelopment as a species. If we combine these two assumptions, thenwe have the claim that change (and hence, development) is traumatic, and therefore generates a move for the organism to return to a prior,less traumatic state. Page 10

Thus, the drive to repeat isnot simply a drive to return to an earlier form of life, but in fact, a death drive. In this sense, the compulsion to repeat/return and the death drive are equivalent:The goal of all life is death, or to express it retroactively: the inanimate existed before the animate. (Freud 2003a: 78) Page 10

Freud grounds the compulsion to repeat in the basic structure of life, interpreting it as a drive to return to a prior state. Based on assumptions about the organism being closed off and development repeating species history, he equates this drive to return with the death drive, whose ultimate goal is the inanimate.

#on/freud #on/compulsion-to-repeat #on/death-drive

The Implications of Freud’s Transcendental Empiricism

The Implications of Freud’s Transcendental Empiricism Page 10

This section discusses the consequences of Freud's biological and transcendental account of the drives.

#on/freud #on/transcendental-empiricism

Freud's Dualism: Libido vs. Death Drive

Life can be seen asplaying out the relations between two different drives. First, there is thelibido, which aims at conserving life by protecting the organism from external traumas that threaten to destabilise it. This conservation of life is ultimately to be understood as simply making more complex the more fundamental drive, the death drive, which seeks to return the organism to its primal state. Page 10

The first is that the death of an organism is not (necessarily) something that is due to external factors, but rather something that is inherentto the organism itself. The organism seeks to return to the inanimate. Page 11

These drives delay the movementtowards death, and so appear to be conservative. They are the ‘guardiansof life’ in that they allow the organism to perpetuate itself, but thesedrives, such as the sexual drives, are ultimately subordinated to the death drive. They are determined by the fact that the organism wants to chooseits own death, rather than succumb to external influences. Page 11

Second, the account of the organism that Freud has developed isessentially conservative. We can note, for instance, that life does notitself develop into more complex forms, but only increases in complexity under the influence of external circumstances, which mould the organismby chance. Page 11

Life is essentially passive, therefore:it must be the developmental history of our planet and its relationship to the sun that has left its imprint for us to behold in the development of organisms.The conservative organic drives have assimilated every one of these externally imposed modifications of the organism’s life-cycle and duly preserved them in order to repeat them, and therefore inevitably give the misleading impressionof being forces bent on change and progress, whereas they merely seek to achieve an old goal by new means as well as old. (Freud 2003a: 78) Page 11

Third, from the very beginning of Freud’s account, we are dealing with an isolated organism. Freud’s account essentially sees life as closed off from the world. Page 11

Freud's transcendental empiricism leads to a dualistic view of drives (libido/Eros vs. death drive), where the death drive is primary and inherent. This implies that death is an internal goal, life is passive and complexity arises from external factors, and the organism is fundamentally isolated.

#on/freud #on/drives #on/death-drive

Deleuze's Critique of Freud's Account

for Freud, the drives are agents of synthesis, for Deleuze, it is intensityas pure becoming that constitutes itself as drive. Page 12

While Freud develops atranscendental account, Deleuze will argue that this ultimately serves toreinstate, rather than overturn, representation. Page 12

This introduces Deleuze's perspective, contrasting his view of drives with Freud's and stating that Deleuze will critique Freud's transcendental account for ultimately falling back into representation.

#on/deleuze #on/freud #on/critique

II. Repetition and the Death Drive

II. Repetition and the Death Drive Page 12

This section introduces Deleuze's analysis and critique of Freud's concepts of repetition and the death drive.

#on/deleuze #on/freud

Two Forms of Repetition

Two Forms of Repetition Page 12

This subsection begins exploring Deleuze's distinction between different forms of repetition.

#on/repetition #on/deleuze

Deleuze's Two Criticisms of Freud's Repetition Theory

Deleuze’s claim will be thatthe form of repetition underlying the pleasure principle is for Freudultimately material, rather than one that provides the grounds formaterial repetition:Even beyond the pleasure principle, the form of a bare repetition persists,since Freud interprets the death instinct as a tendency to return to the state of inanimate matter, one which upholds the model of a wholly physical or material repetition. (Deleuze 1994: 17) Page 12

Deleuze claims that there are two reasons why Freud’s interpretationfails:1. ‘the persistence of a dualistic and conflictual model which inspiredthe whole theory of drives’;2. ‘the material model which presided over the theory of repetition’(Deleuze 1994: 111). Page 13

Deleuze argues that Freud's theory of repetition, especially the death drive's tendency to return to inanimate matter, remains within a material model of repetition. He identifies two key failures in Freud's account: its dualistic drive model and its material basis for repetition.

#on/deleuze #on/freud #on/repetition

Critique of Freud's Dualistic Drive Model

Freudgives the following summary of the relation between the sexual drives and the death drive: On this view, we need to distinguish two types of drives, one of which – thesexual drives, or Eros – is far more conspicuous, and far more accessible to our knowledge and understanding. It includes not only the uninhibitedsexual drive itself and the goal-inhibited and hence sublimated drive-impulsesderiving from it, but also the self-preservation drive that we perforce ascribeto the ego, and that at the very outset of our psychoanalytical work we hadgood reason to regard as contrasting sharply with the sexual object-drives. . . . On the basis of theoretical considerations underpinned by biology, we posited a death drive charged with the task of causing animate organisms to revert to an inanimate state, whereas Eros pursues the goal of maximizing the complexity of life – and thereby of course preserving it – by an ever more catholic combination of the particles into which living matter had been fragmented . . . According to this view, the emergence of life is therefore the cause both of the urge to carry on living and, simultaneously, of the urge for death, while life itself is a battle and constant compromise between these two urges. Considered thus, the question as to the origin of life remains acosmological one, while the question as to the purpose and intention of life isanswered in dualistic terms. (Freud 2003b: 130–1) Page 13

The difficulty with such a model is that in operating in terms of opposition, it has already accepted the logic of representation at its foundation Page 13

Rather than posit ‘a difference in kind between two forces, or . . . adifference in rhythm or amplitude between two movements’ (Deleuze1994: 113), the life drive and the death drive are moments of the samesystem that operate in fundamentally different manners. In both cases, itis also important to note that we do not have drives, or principles whichoperate on energy (desires), but rather the movement of desire itself isa manifestation of energy. Thus, for Deleuze, Thanatos is to be seenas ‘indistinguishable from the desexualisation of Eros’ (113). In otherwords, the life drives are seen as an expression of a transcendentally prior moment that will turn out to be a field of intensity. Page 14

Deleuze critiques Freud's dualistic model of Eros vs. the death drive, arguing that operating in terms of opposition already presupposes the logic of representation. Instead, Deleuze views the life and death drives as different moments or manifestations of a single, transcendentally prior field of intensity, where desire is the movement of energy itself.

#on/deleuze #on/freud #on/drives #on/representation

Critique of Freud's Material Model of Repetition

The second problem is the material model at the heart of Freud’stheory. Page 14

What Freud istherefore proposing is something like an entropic principle for life. Page 14

For Freud, life wants to return tothe lowest possible energy state. This is opposed to the kind of model we find in Bergson, where life is understood as affirmative and struggling against the entropic nature of matter. Page 14

Let us imagine a vessel full of steam at a high pressure, and here and there in its sides a crack through which the steam is escaping in a jet. The steamthrown into the air is nearly all condensed, and this fall represents a loss of something, an interruption, a deficit. But a small part of the jet of steam subsists, uncondensed, for some seconds; it is making an effort to raise drops which are falling; it succeeds at most in retarding their fall. (Bergson 1998: 247) Page 14

The Bergsonian conception is, therefore, one of life as a force whichworks against the tendency of the inorganic to fall back into a low energy state, even if this process can only delay the inevitable return. Deleuzewill, in fact, push this point further, and argue that the notion of entropy emerges through a transcendental illusion – we tend to see the world interms of extension, and this is a necessary condition for the formulationof the second law of thermodynamics (Deleuze 1994: 228–9). Page 14

The second problem Deleuze identifies is Freud's material model, which posits an entropic principle for life, where life seeks a low energy state. This contrasts with Bergson's view of life as a force resisting entropy, a view Deleuze extends by suggesting entropy itself is based on a representational bias towards extension.

#on/deleuze #on/freud #on/materialism #on/entropy

Weismann's Challenge to Freud's Death Drive

We can note three factors that haveto be combined in his explanation. First, there is a distinct separation between the principles of the life drives and the death drive. Second, the death drive is going to be the first drive that is developed by the organism. Finally, the death drive, since it originates from the leap from inorganic to organic, will be present in all life. Page 15

Individuals are injured Page 15

by the operation of external forces, and for this reason alone it is necessarythat new and perfect individuals should continually arise to take their place, and this necessity would remain even if the individual possessed the power of living eternally.From this follows, on the one hand, the necessity of reproduction, and, onthe other, the utility of death. (Weismann 1889: 23–4) Page 16

Although they are certainly destroyed by other animals, there is nothing comparable to that deterioration of the body which takes place in the higherorganisms. Unicellular animals are too simply constructed for this to be possible. If an infusorians is injured by the loss of some part of its body, it may often recover its former integrity, but if the injury is too great, it dies.The alternative is always either perfect integrity or complete destruction.We may now leave this part of the subject, for it is obvious thatnormal death, that is to say, death which arises from internal causes, is an impossibility among these lower organisms. (Weismann 1889: 26–7)This, therefore, presents a problem for Freud, in that it does not appearthat the earliest forms of life do, in fact, exhibit the propensity to deaththat Freud has posited of them. Page 16

Freud’s only response is to claimthat the death drive is merely implicit in lower life Page 16

Given the nature of simple organic life, it seems difficult to align Freud’sclaim that life is entropic with the basic facts of biology. In fact, itappears to be the case that a drive to preservation and creation precedes the death drive. If that is the case, then Freud’s model is thrown into doubt. Page 17

The paper introduces Weismann's biological arguments, which challenge Freud's account of the death drive. Weismann observed that death in simple organisms is primarily due to external injury, not an inherent tendency or bodily deterioration, suggesting that a drive for preservation might actually precede a death drive, contradicting Freud's model.

#on/freud #on/biology #on/death-drive #on/critique

Two Conceptions of Death

Two Conceptions of Death Page 17

This section explores the distinction between material and spiritual conceptions of death, contrasting Freud and Deleuze.

#on/death #on/freud #on/deleuze

Passive Synthesis and Repetition in Deleuze

For Freud, death is understood in terms of a material repetition. Deleuze is instead going to understand death in terms of the other category of repetition, spiritual repetition. Page 17

For Kant, synthesis is ‘the act of putting differentrepresentations together, and grasping what is manifold in them in one cognition’ (Kant 1929: A77/B103). The classic examples of this modelof synthesis would be bringing together concepts into a judgement, or bringing together perspectives into an object. In both cases, the notion of synthesis presupposes a subject who is responsible for the synthesis. This allows us to explain how a world is constituted for a subject, butmakes it very difficult to explain how a subject itself is constituted. For this reason, Deleuze is interested in the notion of passive synthesis. In place of a conception of synthesis based on notions of a subjectand an object (the Kantian notion of synthesis), Deleuze develops a conception of passive synthesis that constitutes centres of subjectivityrather than emanating from them. As passive synthesis is pre-predicative, it explains how subjects emerge without relying on the ‘higher’ form of synthesis defined by judgement. This in turn allows us to see why judgement appears to be such a successful way of characterising the world (it is a surface effect of a deeper process), while also explaining why an extra element is needed to explain why judgement or law is ableto operate. Repetition therefore becomes, not the bare repetition of a Page 17

state of affairs, but rather the play of the same intensive differences indifference situations. Page 18

Deleuze summarises this difference as follows:We embark upon a transcendental critique when, having situated ourselveson a methodologically reduced plane that provides an essential certainty – a certainty of essence – we ask: how can there be a given, how can something begiven to a subject, and how can the subject give something to itself? . . . Thecritique is empirical when, having situated ourselves in a purely immanentpoint of view, which makes possible a description whose rule is found in determinable hypotheses and whose model is found in physics, we ask: how is the subject constituted in the given? The construction of the given makesroom for the constitution of the subject. (Deleuze 1991: 87) Page 18

Contrasting with Freud's material repetition, Deleuze understands death through "spiritual repetition," which is tied to his concept of passive synthesis. Unlike Kantian synthesis which presupposes a subject, passive synthesis is a pre-personal process that constitutes subjects and explains how they emerge from a field of intensive differences. Repetition, in this view, is the play of these differences.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/repetition #on/transcendental-empiricism

Two Aspects of Death: Personal and Impersonal

Blanchot rightly suggests that death has two aspects. One is personal, concerning the I or the ego, something which I can encounter in a struggleor meet at a limit, or in any case, encounter in a present which causes everything to pass. The other is strangely impersonal, with no relation to ‘me’, neither present nor past but always coming, the source of an incessantmultiple adventure in a persistent question. (Deleuze 1994: 112) Page 18

Whereas the deathdrive appears to be an impersonal instinct that has merely an ‘extrinsic,scientific and objective definition’ (111), the personal nature of deathseems to relate it also to something like Hegel’s Phenomenology.13 In themaster–slave dialectic, Hegel claims that it is the experience of death thatallows us to develop an understanding of ourselves freed from inessentialdeterminations Page 18

For this consciousness has been fearful, not of this or that particular thing or just at odd moments, but its whole being has been seized with dread; for it has experienced the fear of death, the absolute Lord. In that experience, it has been quite unmanned, has trembled in every fibre of its being, and everything solid and stable has been shaken to its foundations. But this pure universal movement, the absolute melting away of everything stable, isthe simple, essential nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self, which consequently is implicit in this consciousness.(Hegel 1977: §194) Page 19

In Deleuze’s discussion of Kant, the third synthesis of time is the pureform of time: a field of intensity that constitutes the world of subjects and objects. Deleuze’s discussion of Freud also sees death as ‘a pure form – the empty form of time’ (Deleuze 1994: 112). Death therefore refers us to the field of intensities. It is ‘the state of free differences when they are no longer subject to the form imposed upon them by an I or an ego’ (113). So, the real notion of death is in fact the collapse of a given structure in the face of some kind of pure becoming. In this sense, death is a perpetual drive that destabilises identities, and makes transition possible: Page 19

The experience of death is the most common of occurrences in the unconscious, precisely because it occurs in life and for life, in every passage or becoming, in every intensity as passage or becoming. (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 330) Page 19

In this sense, life is characterised by death, to the extent that it is runthrough with experiences which destabilise the structure of the organism, and the identity of the ego. There is, therefore, for Deleuze, something equivalent to the death drive, but this does not operate accordingto an entropic principle in the way that we find in Freud’s model. Structures are not destabilised through a drive to return to a state where there is no energy in the system, but rather through the emergence of intensities into the field of representation that disrupt our identities. In this sense, the death drive does not operate according to a principle, but simply is the manifestation of intensive difference into the realm of the unconscious (‘this energy does not serve Thanatos, it constitutes him’ [Deleuze 1994: 139]). This leads to a reversal of our understandingof death. Since intensive death is a part of life (the destabilising of identities), our ‘death’ in this sense is coextensive with life Page 19

Drawing on Blanchot, the paper distinguishes between personal death (related to the ego's encounter with limits, like in Hegel) and impersonal death (a force always coming, unrelated to the 'me'). Deleuze connects this impersonal death to his concept of intensity from the third synthesis of time. This "intensive death" is not entropic but a perpetual drive within life itself that destabilizes structures and identities, making transition and becoming possible; it is the manifestation of intensive difference in the unconscious.

#on/death #on/deleuze #on/intensity #on/becoming

The Invisibility of Repetition and Intensive Difference

So the final question is: whydo we repeat that which we cannot represent? Earlier, Deleuze has stated that ‘the present is the repeater, the past is repetition itself, and the futureis that which is repeated’ (Deleuze 1994: 94). It is therefore the field ofintensive difference which expresses itself in the present. Now, as this isdifferent in kind from representation, it cannot occur within the fieldof representation as it is in itself. In this sense, the intensities which constitute us express themselves throughout our lives in a variety of contexts ‘in disguise’. When we are dealing with intensive difference, ‘the path it traces is invisible and becomes visible only in reverse, to the extentthat it is travelled over and covered by the phenomena it induces withinthe system’ (119–20). Page 20

The paper addresses why we repeat what cannot be represented, linking it to Deleuze's view of time where the intensive field of the future expresses itself in the present. Because intensity is different from representation, it appears "in disguise" in the representational world, and its underlying path is only discernible retrospectively through the effects it produces.

#on/repetition #on/representation #on/intensity #on/time

III. The Three Syntheses

III. The Three Syntheses Page 20

This section introduces Deleuze's concept of the three passive syntheses, which provide a non-representational account of subjectivity and experience, contrasting with Kantian and Freudian models.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/transcendental-empiricism

The First Synthesis and the Pleasure Principle (Habit)

The First Synthesis and the Pleasure Principle Page 20

This subsection discusses the first passive synthesis, related to habit and the constitution of the subject's relationship with the world, linking it to Freud's pleasure principle.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/habit #on/pleasure-principle

Constitution of the Subject through Habit and Pleasure

we will find that we have two relationsto the world that operate in parallel, the first in terms of actual andrepresentational structures, but also a second, which is intensive, andgoverned by ‘virtual’ objects. Page 20

The first thing to note about Deleuze’s characterisation of Freud’sproject is that he claims that the concern of Beyond the PleasurePrinciple is not ‘the exceptions to this principle, but rather to determinethe conditions under which pleasure effectively becomes a principle’(Deleuze 1994: 96). Page 20

Now,prior to the organising principle of the ego, Deleuze argues that we can see ‘biopsychical life’ as ‘a field of individuation in which differences in intensity are distributed here and there [Ça et là] in the form of excitations’ (96). Within such biopsychical life, we will, of course, havevariations in the level of excitation of the system at various points and at various moments. In this sense, pleasure, as a process, will be operative within the system (the level of excitation will sometimes drop). In thiscontext, Deleuze makes a rather swift (and problematic in English orGerman) linguistic argument to equate the ‘here and there [Ça et là]’ ofbiopsychical life with Freud’s id [Ça]. Now, in spite of the problematic nature of the argument, it does seem like a reasonable equation, andit allows us to raise the key question of this section, which is: howdoes pleasure cease to be a process, in order to become a principle thatorganises the life of the unconscious? Page 21

Deleuze suggests that we initially have a flux of experience that needs to be contracted into an organised flow of anticipations. This isachieved through the contraction of habits that systematised experienceprior to our representation of it (Deleuze 1994: 70–9). Page 21

Deleuze’s point is also that as the selfthat is constituted by the integration or contraction of excitations, itsimply is these excitations. This gives us the reason why Deleuze callsthese contracting egos ‘narcissistic’. What they relate to is, in a sense,themselves, or an image of themselves, in the form of the excitationsthat they bind. The movement of binding therefore finds satisfaction in anarcissistic relation to its own image. In this sense, the fact that the egosconstituted by the binding process are narcissistic parallels the way in which the selves that are contracted habits in the first synthesis of time(habit) related not to objects, but to signs. A heartbeat appears as a signin our world that does not resemble the movement of the heart itself,and similarly, my feeling of thirst does not relate to water itself as H2O, but rather to water as an appearance in my world. Similarly, the bindingof excitations constitutes egos that do not relate directly to objects, butto images of themselves. Page 22

It is not the case thatpleasure gives rise to habit, therefore, in the sense that we might talkof repeating something enjoyable, but rather it is the existence of habitsthat lead to pleasure. Page 22

it is only by relating pleasure to the past and the future,and instituting the pleasure principle that we are able to see pleasure as operating prior to habit. That is, by talking about ‘pleasure in general’,we introduce the ‘idea of pleasure’ (Deleuze 1994: 97–9). In this sense, the constitutive nature of pleasure becomes represented as a law, orprinciple of pleasure. Once pleasure is not related to a passive synthesis, but is seen as organised in relation to a principle, we have an activesynthesis that relates to an ego. The result of this is that the pleasureprinciple will now be seen as primary, since without some kind of external organising principle, it is impossible to explain how indifferent processes can form a coherent system, and how individual excitationscan be related to one another (how habits are formed). Page 22

Deleuze writes, ‘binding synthesis cannot be explained by the intention or the effort to master and excitation, even though it may have that effect’ (Deleuze 1994: 97). Now such an explanation in terms of mastery rests on a conflation of the two levels of analysis. To the extent that binding brings an excitation within the domain ofthe pleasure principle, the process of binding (the passive synthesis) is a form of mastery. But insofar as we remain on this level, we do not haveanything like an intention, or an effort to master, as we are prior to a self that could be the agent of this intention. These notions only come into play when we are dealing with active syntheses and the mathematicalconception of time. Deleuze’s account therefore explains why Freud relies on active syntheses while itself providing a non-representational basis to it. Page 23

Deleuze describes the first passive synthesis as the contraction of habits from a flux of intensive excitations (the Id). This process constitutes "narcissistic" egos that relate to images of these excitations (signs), not external objects. It is the formation of habits that leads to pleasure, and this constitutive process is then represented as the pleasure principle through active synthesis, which relates to the ego and appears primary from a representational perspective. Deleuze's framework provides a non-representational basis for processes Freud describes using concepts rooted in active, ego-based synthesis.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/pleasure-principle #on/habit #on/passive-synthesis #on/active-synthesis

The Second Synthesis (Memory) and Virtual Objects

The Second Synthesis Page 23

This section explores the second passive synthesis, related to memory and the constitution of the subject's relation to the world via virtual objects.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/memory

Actual and Virtual Objects in the Second Synthesis

Pleasure does operate within this system, but it is also the case that ‘biopsychical systems’ have some kind of relation to an outside. As Deleuze puts it, ‘A child who begins to walk does not only bind excitations in a passive synthesis, even supposing these were endogenous excitations born of its own movements. No one has everwalked endogenously’ (Deleuze 1994: 99). That is, our actions havean object. Page 23

Active synthesis is defined by the test of reality in an ‘objectal’ relation, and it is precisely according to the reality principle that the ‘ego’ tends to ‘be activated’, to be actively unified, to unite all its small composing andcontemplative passive egos, to be topologically distinguished from the Id.(Deleuze 1994: 98) Page 24

the organism cannotsimply function according to the pleasure principle alone. Sometimes onedrive may seek satisfaction in a way which threatens the integrity of theorganism as a whole. Page 24

As well as the extension of active synthesis, we also have an extension of a passive synthesis. This revolves around the notion of a virtual object:The child constructs for itself another object, a quite different kind of objectwhich is a virtual object or centre and which governs and compensates for the progresses and failures of its real activity: it puts several fingers in its mouth, and appraises the whole situation from the point of view of this virtual mother. (Deleuze 1994: 99 Page 24

binding does not relateto objects, but rather to signs – binding is an integration of excitations rather than a relation to a representation. This means that the kind of external object that allows for the generation of excitations will be different in kind from the actual objects of representation. Page 25

‘an image of an action that will satisfya drive auto-erotically’ (Faulkner 2006: 34). Page 25

the process of binding did not rely on the nature of an externalobject as such, but rather operated in terms of signs (just as the heartbeat does not resemble the motion of the heart). Similarly, in sucking his thumb, the child is not interested in the actual object he is related to (the thumb), but rather in providing signs for a passive synthesis. Thus, the thumb takes the place of the mother’s breast as providing excitations for the organism. Now, given that passive syntheses do not operate with representations, the child does not take the thumb to be the breast, but rather that aspect of the breast which satisfied the original binding process. This aspect is an action, or an image of an action. The thumb therefore provides a series of excitations that can be bound by a subrepresentational passive synthesis. Page 25

we have two typesof objects, one of which is actual, and one of which is virtual. Deleuze characterises virtual objects as ‘shreds of pure past’ (Deleuze 1994: 101). Page 25

Deleuze gives the following description ofthe constitution of the virtual object: We see both that the virtuals are deducted from the series of reals and that they are incorporated in the series of reals. This derivation implies, first, anisolation or suspension which freezes the real in order to extract a pose, an aspect or a part. This isolation, however, is qualitative: it does not consistsimply in subtracting a part of the real object, since the subtracted partacquires a new nature in functioning as a virtual object. (Deleuze 1994: 100 Page 25

The binding process is notconcerned with the totality of the object, however, but only with thoseaspects of the object which are capable of generating excitations. It thussubtracts from the total object those aspects that are capable of creatingexcitations in it. It is only interested in a particular gesture, motion or aspect, and not for instance, the object which actually moves to createthe gesture. As a representation has to be a coherent object separatefrom the particular perspective it is presented from, then the processof subtraction actually changes its nature into something that cannotbecome present to consciousness. As a representational object, a gesturewithout a gesturer is incoherent, for instance. Page 26

virtual objects have toin some sense motivate behaviour – they have to be found in the worldsomewhere. So when the child sucks his thumb, he is relating to a virtualobject, but only on the basis that this is incorporated into an actualobject. Thus every object is doubled. Page 26

There is a second reason, which is that the positing of a non-actualseries paralleling the actual world allows us to explain the functioningof association. Deleuze puts the issue as follows:The difficulties of conceptualising the process of repetition have often beenemphasised. Consider the two presents, the two scenes or the two events (infantile and adult) in their reality, separated by time; how can the former present act at a distance upon the present one? How can it provide a model for it, when all its effectiveness is retrospectively received from the later present?(Deleuze 1994: 104) Page 26

For Deleuze, what ties together two series of events is that the samevirtual object is at play (incorporated) in both series. This explains whya past event can still influence the present: not because of the actualevents themselves, but because the same virtual object is incorporatedinto them both. This also explains why we can see, for instance, insomeone’s character, a repetition of the same relationships, or the sameactions, in different situations. The subject does not reason by analogyon the basis of their past responses, but is reacting to the same eventincorporated into a different state of affairs. Page 27

what is repeated is something that hasnever actually been present, but rather that the same virtual object ispresent in disguise in the various states of affairs that make up therepetition. There is no first term to the series itself, however, as repetitiontakes place in response to the drives rather than the ego and its object. Page 27

The second passive synthesis involves the organism's relation to the outside world and the constitution of a sphere beyond auto-eroticism, linked to Freud's reality principle and the ego. Crucially, this synthesis introduces the concept of the virtual object, which is a non-representational "shred of pure past" derived from aspects of actual objects (those capable of generating excitations) and incorporated into them. These virtual objects motivate behavior and explain repetition and the influence of the past on the present not through analogy between actual events, but through the recurrence of the same virtual object "in disguise" within different actual situations.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/virtual-object #on/repetition #on/association #on/passive-synthesis

The Third Synthesis (Time) and Pure Intensity

The Third Synthesis Page 27

This section presents the third passive synthesis, which is the pure form of time as a field of intensity, underlying both actual and virtual domains.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/time #on/intensity

Intensity as the Ground of Actual and Virtual

Deleuzemakes the claim that the virtual and actual objects: inevitably become confused, the pure past thereby assuming the status of a former present, albeit mythical, and reconstituting the illusion it was supposed to denounce, resuscitating the illusion of an original and a derived,of an identity in the origin, and a resemblance in the derived. (Deleuze 1994: 109) Page 27

at root, we have not two drives, but asingle form of intensity that finds expression in both sets of drives. In this regard, the third synthesis mirrors the result of the three syntheses earlier in the chapter, where the future, as the field of pure intensive difference, becomes actualised as both the past and the present. Such a moment of pure intensity prevents the orientation of our account towards pure actuality Page 28

The third passive synthesis reveals that the confusion between actual and virtual objects creates an illusion of a mythical origin. At a deeper level, this synthesis points to a single underlying form of intensity that expresses itself through the drives and actualizes as the past and present. This field of pure intensity prevents reducing reality solely to actual states of affairs.

#on/deleuze #on/synthesis #on/intensity #on/actuality #on/virtuality

IV. Conclusion

IV. Conclusion Page 29

This section provides a summary of the key arguments and Deleuze's alternative view compared to Freud and Kant.

#on/conclusion #on/deleuze #on/freud

Intensive Becoming as the Ground of Reality

behind our representationsis not an atemporal realm of forms, a sedentary distribution, but rather the nomadic distribution of intensive becoming. Page 29

thetranscendental conditions for the subject are not to be understood as grounded in the repetition of structures of representation at a transcendental level (Kant’s three syntheses), but rather in the intensive field of the future that constitutes itself as the actual world of extensities. Page 29

Ratherthan a desire for the expenditure of energy and the return to a mechanistic conception of the inorganic, the psyche is instead seen as the expression of an intensive field that is a death drive only to a representation of the psyche that seeks to constrain it under the principles of identity and pleasure. Page 29

In conclusion, Deleuze argues that reality behind representation is not a static realm but a dynamic field of intensive becoming. The transcendental conditions for subjectivity lie in this intensive future, which constitutes the actual world. The psyche is an expression of this field, and what appears as Freud's entropic death drive is merely how this intensity is represented when constrained by principles of identity and pleasure.

#on/deleuze #on/intensity #on/becoming #on/psyche