1000 Plateaus:
Freud tried to approach crowd phenomena from the point of view of the unconscious, but he did not see clearly, he did not see that the unconscious iutself was fundamentally a crowd. He was myopic and hard of hearing; it mistook crowds for a single person.
Deleuze and Guattari read the Wolf Man against Freud and his unifying mistakes, his rendering of singular what is multiple. They invoke Canetti on crowd (mass) and packs, noting that there is no more equality or any less hierarchy in packs than in masses even as they differ in kind. For them, the pack is schizo, with members exposed (no one has their back). In contrast, the position of the mass subject is paranoid "with all the identifications of the individual with the group, the group with the leader, and the leader with the group; be securely embedded in the ,mass, get close to the center, never be at the edge except in the line of duty."
Their move is odd. They criticize Canetti's crowd as if it were Freud's. That is, they've already criticized Freud, debunked him even. They've moved on. But they regress and write as if Canetti's crowd were Freud's when it's not. In Canetti's, there is no duty, no center, no necessary leader, no identification.
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