‘If , as Deleuze and Guattari argue, schizophrenia is the condition that marks the outer edges of capitalism, then bi-polar disorder  is the mental illness proper to the ‘interior’ of capitalism.’ 

–Fisher, Mark

…. and so it seems interior to the magazines one can pick up at your lcoal RBS branch.

Article found in RBS ‘Sense’ magazine, Spring 2011

There is something slightly ridiculous about this article: RBS  tying in depression as being caused by ‘financial strains’ on the individual without any ommission of guilt, given that these ‘financial strains’ were caused to a large degree by RBS.

In philosopher Mark Fisher’s book  ‘Capitalist Realism’, there is a great argument put forward drawing from Marxist economist Christain Marazzi which correlates post-fordist capitalism with the proliferation of mental illnesses in the West. There is something very humorous and slighlty depressing in itself about finding an article about how financial stress can result in depression in an RBS magazine. 

Any Marxist would immediately idendify the ideological maneouvre deployed by RBS here: the deliberate breaking of cause and effect, the de-politicization of the economy suggesting that these ‘strained economic times’ are the result of indeterminable factors beyond anyones- even RBS’s- control. As Mark Fisher comments on our current paradigmatical state of understanding and comprehension with regards to mental illness, or present onotology with regards to these conditions:

”The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strichly commensurate with its de-politicization. Considering mental illness as an inidividual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization ( you are sick becasue of your brain chemisty) Second it provides an enormously lucractive market in which multinational pharmaceutiacal comapnies can peddle their paramacetuicals. The task of re-politicizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism ‘