11 - Against Interiority: Foucault’s Struggle with Psychoanalysis

Summary

I had been mad enough to study reason.

I was reasonable enough to study madness.

Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self

Unreason becomes the reason of reason.

Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie

And how comfortless is the thought that the sickness of the normal does not necessarily imply as its opposite the health of the sick.

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

In The History of Sexuality, Volume I, Foucault claimed to have definitively refuted the basic claims of psychoanalysis. However, a year after its publication, when a young acquaintance asked him to recommend a form of therapy, Foucault gave rather unexpected advice. Instead of suggesting something avant garde, like Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis, he replied, “Freudian will be fine.” This incident - as well as a consideration of his oeuvre - indicates the intensely conflicted and complex nature of Foucault's relation to analysis. Just as Moses haunted Freud “like an unlaid ghost,” so Foucault could never successfully exorcise the specter of Freud. He kept returning to Freud throughout his career. Indeed, the persistence of Foucault's comings and goings with respect to the Freud led Derrida to remark sardonically that he was engaged in an “interminable and inexhaustible” fort-da game with the founder of psychoanalysis.