Unskewered: The anti-Oedipal gothic of Patrick McGrath

In Patrick McGrath’s gothic fiction there are ‘psychoanalysts everywhere’, and therapy itself generates horror. From early gleeful parodies of Freudianism such as ‘The Skewer’ (1988), McGrath’s fiction would develop a sustained attack on psychotherapy and psychiatry, as well as the broader field of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Horror is revealed not only behind the walls of the asylum, but also, and especially, in a mistaken diagnosis and perspective on mental anomaly. McGrath’s attacks on psychoanalysis can be aligned with the anti-Oedipal project of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In this article I contend that novels such as Asylum and Spider have affinities with the concept of schizoanalysis, and that this offers a creative method of thinking through horror after Freud. Via McGrath’s fascinatingly ‘mad’ characters and his richly textured style, the act of reading itself induces virtual derangement.