Félix Guattari

Lore & Background

Guattari was born in Villeneuve-les-Sablons, a working-class suburb of northwest Paris. As a teenager he engaged in Trotskyist political activism, and in the early 1950s he served as apprentice and analysand to French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He later worked at the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde under Jean Oury, whom he first met at a private clinic in Saumery. At La Borde, a novel orientation suspended the classical analyst/analysand pair in favor of open confrontation in group therapy, studying the dynamics of several subjects in complex interaction.

From 1955 to 1965 Guattari edited and contributed to the Trotskyist newspaper La Voie Communiste. He supported anti-colonialist struggles and the Italian Autonomists, and co-founded the F.G.E.R.I. and its review Recherche. In 1968 he met Gilles Deleuze at the University of Vincennes, and they began laying the groundwork for Anti-Oedipus. In 1973 Guattari was tried and fined for publishing an issue of Recherches on homosexuality, charged with 'outrage to public decency.' In the 1980s he joined the environmental movement with his ecosophy.

Reader's Guide

Guattari's significance lies in his radical rethinking of psychoanalysis and politics. With Deleuze, he argued that the institution of psychoanalysis had become a center of power, its confessional techniques resembling those of Christianity, and that it had historically embraced a police state. Their work Anti-Oedipus was described by Michel Foucault as 'an introduction to the non-fascist life.' Guattari viewed the primary commodity produced under capitalism as subjectivity itself, and sought to produce, collect, and reinvent subjectivity to make it compatible with 'mutant Universes of value.' His concept of schizoanalysis pursued a more experimental and collective approach than Freudian analysis. His later work on ecosophy and micropolitics aimed to liberate subjectivity and open new horizons for resistance to global capitalism, which he called 'Integrated World Capitalism.' His legacy includes influencing post-structuralist philosophy, institutional psychotherapy, and environmental thought.

Did You Know?

• Guattari was tried and fined in 1973 for publishing an issue of Recherches on homosexuality, charged with 'outrage to public decency.'
• He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze and independently created ecosophy.
• Guattari worked at the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde under Jean Oury, where group therapy replaced the classical analyst/analysand pair.
• He viewed the primary commodity produced under capitalism as subjectivity itself.