Paranoiac Criticism
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
A Practical Guide to Paranoiac-Critical Method
Paranoia: Delirium of interpretation comprising a systematic structure.
Paranoiac-Critical Activity: Spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectification of delirious associations and interpretations.
-Salvador Dalí,
The Latest Modes of Intellectual Stimulation for the Summer of 1934
As is the case with many subversive movements after having ceased to be thought of as subversive, Surrealism is remembered today primarily as a label for those of its external manifestations fortunate enough to have been absorbed into the vast, sticky, infinitely flexible and formaldehyde-filled belly of popular culture. But though recognized in some of the more memorable visual and poetic images of the early twentieth century, Surrealism was more importantly a concrete (but dynamic) body of theory, resulting in practice, resulting in these images.
This body of theory was initially defined by André Breton in his first and second Surrealist Manifestoes, and he managed to keep a tight rein on the theory of Surrealism for its entire existence by virtue of the manifesto-writer's ability to "define" anyone he pleases out of the group. For Breton, who had studied medicine and worked in psychiatric wards during the first World War (Encarta online, http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=03D6E000), Surrealism was from the start involved in the exploration of the artistic potential of mental pathology. Most of the Surrealist "heroes," whether contemporary or adopted from the past, were either mentally ill or at least socially deviant. In the same breath Breton praised Freud, the Marquis deSade and the woman known as Nadja, the inspiration for Breton's book bearing the same name, who was subsequently committed to a mental institute.
Of the various artists, writers, etc. included at one time or another in Breton's cabal, Salvador Dalí was, from a theoretical perspective, one of the most important. As was the case with most with whom Breton was led to disagree with on artistic or theoretical grounds, Dalí was eventually expelled from the group, but not before manking significant contributions to surrealist theory. Ironically, today Dali's name is better-known in association with the movement than Breton's (this can perhaps be linked with the more broad irony that Surrealism was originally intended to be primarily a literary movement- there was much heated debate in the original Surrealist journals as to whether a Surrealist painter could exist at all!).
Delusion:
in psychology, absolute conviction, often preoccupying, that is characterized as idiosyncratic, of personal significance to the deluded individual, and persistent despite logical absurdity or contradictory evidence. Delusions are symptomatic of such mental disorders as paranoia, schizophrenia, and major depression and of such physiological conditions as senile psychosis and delirium. They vary in intensity, extent, and coherence and may represent pathological exaggeration of normal tendencies to rationalization, wishful thinking, and the like. [italics added]
-definition from Britannica.com
According to Dalí, criticism is itself an irrational, creative act. Sensory information is simply that- it is interpretation that assigns meaning. The basic observation of Paranoiac-Critical theory is that multiple meanings can be simultaneously assigned to the same sensory data. The double image is not two images observed at the same time, but two meanings attached to the same image.
Dalí spoke of this ability in terms of "paranoid capacity," a quality inherent in the mind of the observer, the only apparent limiting factor to the number of meanings that can be simultaneously assigned to the same sensory data. What he seems to mean by this is the quality of "mental flexibility" of the observer.
The technique of Critical Paranoia seeks to make use of this capacity for assigning multiple simultaneous meanings to "systematize confusion" by using the obsessive idea present in the mind of the observer as an interpretive lens for conceptually linking the manifestations of external reality.
It is important to understand here that Dalí drew no practical distinction between Critical Paranoia and the normal mechanism used to assign meaning to sense perceptions of external origin except for the subject’s reflexive awareness of the conceptual system by which this meaning is assigned. It is this conceptual system that Dalí associated with the "obsessive idea". This reflexive awareness of the interpretive lens through which the observer assigns meaning to sense data that separates the Critical-Paranoiac from the victim of Paranoid Delusional Disorder. The latter is mentally ill precisely to the extent that he/she does not recognize the obsessive idea governing his/her interpretive process. Note that these criteria for differentiating between the sane and the mentally ill make no judgment regarding the actual content of the delusion. Therefore, according to Dalí's definition, individuals interpreting sense data in perfectly average, ordinary ways can be relegated to the same camp as the mentally ill on the grounds of an inability/refusal to reflexively examine the obsessive idea behind their own critical process.
The basic example of the Paranoiac-Critical method at work could be illustrated with one of the classic double-images, such as that of the white candlestick that becomes two black faces. The initial level of this exercise, wherein foreground and background can be made, through an effort of will, to change places, alternating between candlestick and faces, is well-known and relatively simple. From a Paranoiac-Critical standpoint, the next logical step would be to condition the mind hold both aspects of the image in conscious perception simultaneously. At this point, the meaning of each interpretation would begin to exert an effect on the other- the qualitative meaning attached to the candlestick is affected by the fact that it exists as the border between two faces, with the meaning of the faces being altered by this association and vice-versa, ad infinitum. So what we end up with is an infinitely reflexive, internally consistent system of associations existing between two faces and a candlestick, which at some point begins to extend outward to encompass all faces and candlesticks, then anything and everything associated with faces and candlesticks (this is where psychoanalytical symbolism comes into play), and eventually everything associated with these associations, a vast network of critical associations ultimately governed by the initial and constant obsessive idea. It is important to reiterate at this point: we do not actually see faces or a candlestick (though this is what common language would have us believe). We see areas of white and black on a page which are critically interpreted, assigning them the meanings of "faces" and "candlestick".
As with all surrealist technique, Critical Paranoia was conceived as an experiment in applied psychopathology, with the avowed purpose of subverting reality. Dalí saw this method as different from Breton's automatism in the sense that while automatism was passive and subjective, Paranoid Criticism was active and grounded in the objective. In this it had an advantage over automatism in that Paranoiac-Critical associations are much more easily transferable than those of automatism, the products of which had the disadvantage of being subject to interpretation and thus "de-obscuration". The results of concrete irrationality, on the other hand, are themselves already systematized interpretation, and thus "retain in the paranoiac delirium- and, after its extinction under everybody's stupefied look- the exact weight corresponding to their volume and the delirious concentration of their most physical luminous contours."
Works Cited
Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. University of Michigan Press, 1972
Breton, André. Nadja. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press, 1960
www.Britannica.com (Encyclopedia Britannica Online)
Dalí, Salvador. Oui. Ed. Descharnes, Robert. Trans. Shafir, Yvonne. Boston: Exact Change, 1998.
Finkelstein, Haim, ed. The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Paranoia: Delirium of interpretation comprising a systematic structure.
Paranoiac-Critical Activity: Spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectification of delirious associations and interpretations.
-Salvador Dalí,
The Latest Modes of Intellectual Stimulation for the Summer of 1934
As is the case with many subversive movements after having ceased to be thought of as subversive, Surrealism is remembered today primarily as a label for those of its external manifestations fortunate enough to have been absorbed into the vast, sticky, infinitely flexible and formaldehyde-filled belly of popular culture. But though recognized in some of the more memorable visual and poetic images of the early twentieth century, Surrealism was more importantly a concrete (but dynamic) body of theory, resulting in practice, resulting in these images.
This body of theory was initially defined by André Breton in his first and second Surrealist Manifestoes, and he managed to keep a tight rein on the theory of Surrealism for its entire existence by virtue of the manifesto-writer's ability to "define" anyone he pleases out of the group. For Breton, who had studied medicine and worked in psychiatric wards during the first World War (Encarta online, http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=03D6E000), Surrealism was from the start involved in the exploration of the artistic potential of mental pathology. Most of the Surrealist "heroes," whether contemporary or adopted from the past, were either mentally ill or at least socially deviant. In the same breath Breton praised Freud, the Marquis deSade and the woman known as Nadja, the inspiration for Breton's book bearing the same name, who was subsequently committed to a mental institute.
Of the various artists, writers, etc. included at one time or another in Breton's cabal, Salvador Dalí was, from a theoretical perspective, one of the most important. As was the case with most with whom Breton was led to disagree with on artistic or theoretical grounds, Dalí was eventually expelled from the group, but not before manking significant contributions to surrealist theory. Ironically, today Dali's name is better-known in association with the movement than Breton's (this can perhaps be linked with the more broad irony that Surrealism was originally intended to be primarily a literary movement- there was much heated debate in the original Surrealist journals as to whether a Surrealist painter could exist at all!).
Delusion:
in psychology, absolute conviction, often preoccupying, that is characterized as idiosyncratic, of personal significance to the deluded individual, and persistent despite logical absurdity or contradictory evidence. Delusions are symptomatic of such mental disorders as paranoia, schizophrenia, and major depression and of such physiological conditions as senile psychosis and delirium. They vary in intensity, extent, and coherence and may represent pathological exaggeration of normal tendencies to rationalization, wishful thinking, and the like. [italics added]
-definition from Britannica.com
According to Dalí, criticism is itself an irrational, creative act. Sensory information is simply that- it is interpretation that assigns meaning. The basic observation of Paranoiac-Critical theory is that multiple meanings can be simultaneously assigned to the same sensory data. The double image is not two images observed at the same time, but two meanings attached to the same image.
Dalí spoke of this ability in terms of "paranoid capacity," a quality inherent in the mind of the observer, the only apparent limiting factor to the number of meanings that can be simultaneously assigned to the same sensory data. What he seems to mean by this is the quality of "mental flexibility" of the observer.
The technique of Critical Paranoia seeks to make use of this capacity for assigning multiple simultaneous meanings to "systematize confusion" by using the obsessive idea present in the mind of the observer as an interpretive lens for conceptually linking the manifestations of external reality.
It is important to understand here that Dalí drew no practical distinction between Critical Paranoia and the normal mechanism used to assign meaning to sense perceptions of external origin except for the subject’s reflexive awareness of the conceptual system by which this meaning is assigned. It is this conceptual system that Dalí associated with the "obsessive idea". This reflexive awareness of the interpretive lens through which the observer assigns meaning to sense data that separates the Critical-Paranoiac from the victim of Paranoid Delusional Disorder. The latter is mentally ill precisely to the extent that he/she does not recognize the obsessive idea governing his/her interpretive process. Note that these criteria for differentiating between the sane and the mentally ill make no judgment regarding the actual content of the delusion. Therefore, according to Dalí's definition, individuals interpreting sense data in perfectly average, ordinary ways can be relegated to the same camp as the mentally ill on the grounds of an inability/refusal to reflexively examine the obsessive idea behind their own critical process.
The basic example of the Paranoiac-Critical method at work could be illustrated with one of the classic double-images, such as that of the white candlestick that becomes two black faces. The initial level of this exercise, wherein foreground and background can be made, through an effort of will, to change places, alternating between candlestick and faces, is well-known and relatively simple. From a Paranoiac-Critical standpoint, the next logical step would be to condition the mind hold both aspects of the image in conscious perception simultaneously. At this point, the meaning of each interpretation would begin to exert an effect on the other- the qualitative meaning attached to the candlestick is affected by the fact that it exists as the border between two faces, with the meaning of the faces being altered by this association and vice-versa, ad infinitum. So what we end up with is an infinitely reflexive, internally consistent system of associations existing between two faces and a candlestick, which at some point begins to extend outward to encompass all faces and candlesticks, then anything and everything associated with faces and candlesticks (this is where psychoanalytical symbolism comes into play), and eventually everything associated with these associations, a vast network of critical associations ultimately governed by the initial and constant obsessive idea. It is important to reiterate at this point: we do not actually see faces or a candlestick (though this is what common language would have us believe). We see areas of white and black on a page which are critically interpreted, assigning them the meanings of "faces" and "candlestick".
As with all surrealist technique, Critical Paranoia was conceived as an experiment in applied psychopathology, with the avowed purpose of subverting reality. Dalí saw this method as different from Breton's automatism in the sense that while automatism was passive and subjective, Paranoid Criticism was active and grounded in the objective. In this it had an advantage over automatism in that Paranoiac-Critical associations are much more easily transferable than those of automatism, the products of which had the disadvantage of being subject to interpretation and thus "de-obscuration". The results of concrete irrationality, on the other hand, are themselves already systematized interpretation, and thus "retain in the paranoiac delirium- and, after its extinction under everybody's stupefied look- the exact weight corresponding to their volume and the delirious concentration of their most physical luminous contours."
Works Cited
Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. University of Michigan Press, 1972
Breton, André. Nadja. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press, 1960
www.Britannica.com (Encyclopedia Britannica Online)
Dalí, Salvador. Oui. Ed. Descharnes, Robert. Trans. Shafir, Yvonne. Boston: Exact Change, 1998.
Finkelstein, Haim, ed. The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
