2002 

PARANOIAC VISIONS AND NEO-REALITIES IN THE RECENT CINEMA: 

Reflections on Tausk's "Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia" 

 Paper Presentation by  David L. Downing, Psy.D.

Academy Introduction 

by Linda J. Young, Ph.D.

I'd like to begin by saying a few words about today's program as it relates to  the Academy.  We are going to be seeing and discussing films today and one way to think about the process of psychoanalysis is to conceptualize it as an endeavor in which the individual's personal life script of which he or  she is actor, director, cinematographer and editor is entered into,  with the purpose of understanding and articulating previously unspoken meanings.

Every individual is different, and accordingly, every film or life script is unique. However, in this country the mental health industry, in which psychoanalysis is situated, has been transformed into an enterprise in which the uniqueness of individuals and their  personal responsibility in constructing and enacting these life scripts is overshadowed by an uniform template which places individuals in  diagnostic and statistical manuals which  assumes them  to be  helplessly afflicted with disorder and disease.

Increasingly, the  "treatment" for   their presumed disorder is psychopharmacological intervention. Dr. Downing will be talking today about a paper by Victor Tausk called 'The influencing machine." In a general way, this idea refers to individuals' convictions that they are not in control of their lives and that instead, other people, or some form of impersonal force, is. This phenomenological experience, from a meta-psychological perspective might be understood by describing how the conscious ego is only a small part of the experiencing and determining components of self and that we are always living in a de-centered place, not centrally  in control of our volition or psychic determinations. 

But perhaps we can use this metaphor to analogize important features of our professional life as well. Specifically, might we think of the influencing machine as  governmental and professional agencies which are increasingly regulating the practice of psychotherapy  such that pre-determined pre-scribed assumptions of mental illness with accompanying standards of care and practice , are influencing all aspects of the work?

Consequently, the freedom to have a private, confidential and creative conversation "influenced" by the individual's particular way of focusing and representing the world,  is becoming  increasingly threatened.    We will be hearing today, I anticipate, about the way films can portray aspects of private experience that nearly defy attempts to capture them in words. Often these experiences are referred to as "psychotic". Perhaps all manner of experience that refuses to be captured, so to speak, within the dominant culture's signifying discourse , eluding its understanding is similarly "psychotic". Maybe one day it will be considered "psychotic" to think about things like anxiety and  depression as anything other than biochemical abnormalities. And maybe it is already psychotic, or crazy,  to be fighting, as the Academy is, to secure  a place for practitioners of psychoanalysis to work which lies outside of society's "influencing machine' of biomedical strictures. Perhaps if people are truly mad, or angry enough, we might be able to keep alive a place where therapists and those who consult with them can say, "no" to pre-scriptive orders of a culture that incarcerates them, involuntarily at times, in  institutions of bio-medical persuasion. Perhaps this madness can be used to help secure a place where reflexive assumptions of disease and illness can be replaced by the thoughtful individually tailored exploration of scripts-life scripts, of the individual, however he or she chooses to live them. Hopefully we will have a chance to discuss more of this, if people are interested,  during our discussion.

I'd like now to introduce Dr. Downing and to say how pleased we are that he is willing to be with us today.