Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 2018, 39, 124–126

doi: 10.1002/anzf.1287

Book Review
Deleuze and Psychology: Philosophical
Provocations to Psychological Practices
Maria Nichterlein and John R. Morss, Routledge, London and New York 2017
ISBN 9781138823686, 174 pages

I want to begin this book review by inviting the reader to consider an event experi-
enced by a young woman, Anna, who had been subjected to sexual assault and abuse
from significant men throughout much of her life. She tended to conclude from these
experiences that she was worthless and culpable in her own victimisation. Anna’s con-
tact with psychologists had led her to accept their diagnosis of PTSD and the limita-
tions implied by that condition. However, one day she caught a bus that had few
passengers. She sat at a window seat but noticed a man enter at the next stop. She felt
anxiety as he walked in her direction passing numerous empty seats. The anxiety grew
to panic as he sat down on the seat beside her, and this panic escalated as he gradu-
ally moved his leg closer to her and slowly moved his hand towards her leg until it
was on her knee. She had experienced similar panic and humiliation before but sud-
denly, in a manner that she was unable to explain, she quietly picked up his hand,
held it high in the air and exclaimed: ‘I found this on my knee, whose is it? ’ The
man immediately bolted from his seat and off the bus at the first opportunity. As she
recalled this event, Anna felt a sense of lightness and warmth which seemed to flow
through her body, culminating in a pleasing feeling of entitlement and agency. Anna
then burst into tears and sobbed deeply for several minutes.
How might a psychologist respond in a way that enables mutual wonder about
this event; wonder about what a body can do? How might a psychologist respond in
a manner that refuses to categorise, colonise, or domesticate this event; a manner that
resists interpretation and judgement? How might a psychologist participate with Anna
in a way that might enable both to be affectively moved by the event towards expan-
sive connections with otherness and the discovery of new territories for becoming in
the world?
In Deleuze and Psychology, Maria Nichterlein and John Morss provide a means of
engaging with these questions as problems in psychological theory and practice.
They pull no punches in their critique of the ‘current state of psychology’ regard-
ing dominant theory and practice as ‘morbid in its focus on pathology,’ ‘insipid in its
satisfaction with the bland and ineffective,’ and ‘florid in its self-promotion to the
wider community despite its timidity with respect to medicine, the insurance industry
and the incarceration industry’ (p. 168). They pose critical provocations which are
grounded in the work of the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze.
This book provides an engaging historical and conceptual introduction to
Deleuze’s philosophy with a specific focus on implications for psychological theory
and practice. The early chapters, which set a historical and conceptual context for
understanding Deleuze, might feel heavy going for readers unfamiliar with Continen-
tal philosophy and critical psychology. However, repeated readings will continue to

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 Book Review

bring forward new understandings and an appreciation of concepts which are never
static and always unfolding in novel ways.
Nichterlein and Morss describe Deleuzian concepts in a historical and political
context and explain how these concepts challenge psychological hegemony, in particu-
lar modern humanistic psychology, in ways that might open up to new possibilities
for theory and in clinical practice. Their provocations challenge a dominant psychol-
ogy informed by the philosophies of Kant and Hegel where the subject is at the cen-
tre of an objective world of representation. The expansive concept of becoming
unsettles identity politics central to dominant psychological notions of the self. The
Deleuzian concept of the assemblage poses a machinic view of connection, change,
and ethics that subverts dominant notions of cause and effect in psychology.
Deleuzian concepts can take us beyond a ‘common sense’ reductionist, experimen-
tal method and practice of humanistic psychology, that can unsettle conservative views
on the identity of the subject, psychopathology, and the politics of therapy. The
reader is invited to question a tendency towards psychological domestication and
colonisation of the individual subject and to appreciate the complexity of the assem-
blage in order to engage in vital and creative engagements with life.
A Deleuzian view offers an invitation for the psychologist to examine the psy-com-
plex; the power structures, operations, and politics of psychological practice itself.
Nichterlein and Morss challenge the discipline of psychology to hold a more critical
political and ethical engagement in its practice. They highlight a distinction between
morality based on external, transcendent codes and ethics which involves an active
evaluation based on immanent criteria concerning vitality and possibilities for life.
Nichterlein and Morss entertainingly describe Deleuzian concepts which critique
and unsettle the most revered concepts in clinical psychological theory and practice.
They critique the pompousness of a psychological practice that fails to reflect on its own
power structures, diagnostic practices, and political blindness and critique the role that
psychology serves in ‘subjectification and domestication’ in the service of conservative
social structures and politics. They point to a practice, which might involve ‘processes of
renewal and (re)engagement with life and with that which is healthy’
(p. 148); processes of active experimentation rather than conformity.
Nichterlein and Morss suggest alternatives to traditional systems of diagnosis that
have ‘a deeply conservative role, a role that restrains the movement of peoples’
becomings: This is the diagnosis, this is the path to health and this is the way you
could enact this path.’ They point to a different kind of naming which explores
symptoms as ‘signs of possibilities of life’ with ‘constellations of signs that point to
the effects of the complex forces present in the lives of individuals.’ They look to
naming such ‘singular assemblages’; constellations of factors which both can order
and unsettle a sense of self, enabling a creative engagement with life.
Nichterlein and Morss describe a Deleuzian focus on ‘regimes of signs’ with con-
cepts of mapping territories that foster connections and interest in differences. They
invite the clinician to develop a sense of curiosity and wonder whilst being mindful
of the potential of the regime to become ‘a totalitarian mechanism of control.’ The
therapist is invited not to employ processes of explanation, which reduce the other
and the therapeutic process to a defined knowable state, but to remain vigilant for
individuations as ‘lines of flight’ which escape their historical context and ‘bring forth
new possibilities for existence.’ ‘The challenge for the clinician then, is not to read
the becomings of those accessing the clinic according to pre-established regimes of

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signs, but to engage in paradoxical ways with such regimes of signs so as to help those
approaching the clinic to transcend those regimes and become originals’ (p. 163); to
become worthy of what happens to us.
This is a book which is conceptually strong and provocative in its challenges to
contemporary psychological theory and practice. However, I found the final chapter,
titled ‘A practical approach’ to be too brief and the least developed chapter in this
book. I was looking forward to Nichterlein and Morss providing examples of their
clinical practice that might illustrate a shift from a domesticating, standardising, and
totalising practice towards a more expansive and ethical Deleuzian style of practice.
Unfortunately, the book lacks a strong practical focus and would have been well
served with examples illustrating attempts to work with the dilemmas of clinical
practice, particularly in contexts which are characterised by moral judgements and
imperatives, such as family violence.
Alan Jenkins
Nada Consulting, Adelaide
alanjenkins@ozemail.com.au

126 ª 2018 Australian Association of Family Therapy

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