Foucault est-il juste avec la psychanalyse ? Aux sources de son hostilité à la psychanalyse

Abstract

While La Volonté de Savoir is presented as an archaeology of psychoanalysis and some see Foucault as a “thinker of psychoanalysis”, precise references to major psychoanalysis works are rare in Foucault. Nevertheless, his formative years familiarised him with the texts of Freud in particular, as demonstrated by the reading notes kept in the Foucault archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. However, it must be acknowledged that this intense reading work has left little trace in his work. And when Foucault evokes the subject in his writings and sayings, his manner of doing so is most often vague. From the very start, as a reader of Politzer, Foucault has in fact found the hypothesis of the unconscious very awkward – which runs against the common interpretation. And when he began to articulate his research around the notion of knowledge-power, his use of psychoanalysis became strategic and grew increasingly removed from the texts. Being “fair” with psychoanalysis was therefore not one of Foucault’s concerns, even if that has meant feeding the “black book” of psychoanalysis well before its time.

Keywords

• Foucault (Michel)
• Politzer (Georges)
• Althusser (Louis)
• psychoanalysis
• anti-psychoanalysis
• social sciences