Inconsciente e instinto de morte: um itinerário do debate inicial de Deleuze com a psicanálise

Abstract

Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty, published in 1967 by Deleuze criticizes psychoanalysis for sustaining the false notion of sadomasochism, and proposes a distinction between death instinct and death drive, so that sadism and masochism are regarded as different processes and mutually exclusive. Deleuze relies on Freud s arguments, more precisely on the text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), to conceive the death instinct as a transcendental principle and to differentiate it from its psychic representative, the death drive. Deleuze thus initiates a philosophical investigation around the transcendental field and the pleasure principle. This investigation runs parallel to an intense debate on psychoanalytical theory, and continues during his later works. Deleuze appreciates the freudian suggestion of an unconscious functioning indifferent to the pleasure principle and governed by repetition. He proposes to develop the concept in the form of transcendental synthesis of time. Difference and Repetition (1968) places Freud in a dialogue with other philosophers especially Hume, Bergson and Nietzsche and postulates three transcendental syntheses marked by repetition, or three passive syntheses of time, which are constitutive of the unconscious and independent of the pleasure principle. From Deleuze s philosophical advances, a reevaluation of several psychoanalytical concepts begins, founded on an understanding of the death instinct as the positive and originating principle of the repetition, as the power that engenders thinking in thought under the effect of violence. Logic of Sense (1969) leads this line of investigation to the argument that the senses are produced by the power of the paradoxes and identifies the death instinct with no sense. Some concepts of Freud, Klein and Lacan are included in the composition of a new image of philosophy and of what it means to think. Trying to demonstrate that thought and sense are produced in close relationship with the erogenous body, Deleuze returns to the psychosexual development but now from the perspective of his philosophical concepts, and presents his own version of the genesis and dynamics of the psychological instances. In view of this philosophical course taking by Deleuze, this doctoral research proposed to explore his discussion with psychoanalysis, according to a trajectory outlined by the concept of death instinct along these three works. We demonstrate how Deleuze understands and appropriates of some psychoanalytic concepts, linking them with other concepts of his philosophy. We indicate which issues from psychoanalysis were valued in the composition of a transcendental philosophy of difference. From a systematic exposition of the criticisms and proposals that Deleuze addresses to the psychoanalytical field in this particular period, we carried out a confrontation between Deleuze's philosophical interventions and the original psychoanalytical texts. Ultimately, this research intends to contribute to a discussion about the pertinence, coherence and relevance of this debate for both domains.