Interactions between Freud's theory and Foucault

greenspun.com : LUSENET : History & Theory of Psychology : One Thread

Dear Sir or Madame. We are in the process of evaluating a proposition for a PHD thesis centered on the concept of ego in Freud and possible relationships with the ethical proposition of Foucault. Different reviewers have had a hard time when trying to access specific literature on this topic due to the lack of journals and books available in our national (Argentina) libraries. We would appreciate receiving information related with this matter that can guide us in a more profound analysis of the proposition. Best regards, Lic. Pautasi

-- ricardo pautasi (molina3@immf.uncor.edu), April 28, 2004

Answers

I'm afraid I cannot give you specific references on this topic, but I have little doubt there is a literature on it -- perhaps more in French than in English or Spanish. Freudian psychology was a major theme in the French philosophical literature just prior to Foucault's emergence (see, e.g., the work of Jean Paul Sartre), but the thrust of Foucault's work was against "totalizing" structuralist (broadly speaking) theories such as Marxism and psychoanalysis. You might find specific references to psychoanalysis in Foucault's very early work (just after he had worked for a time in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1950s): _Mental Illness and Psychology_ and "Dream, Imagination, and Existence." His first major work, (translated in English as) _Madness and Civilization_ is focused mainly on earlier (prepsychoanalytic) approaches to madness.

As for the relation between this and his "ethical" work (by which I assume you mean his final works on the history of sexuality), I'm afraid cannot tell you of any specific connections (but that may well be because I stopped reading much of the exploding secondary literature on Foucault about ten years ago). I know that there is a fourth volume to the history of sexulaity in manuscript form (Foucault's will specified no psothumous books). Paul Rabinow (who is, I believe, at U. California, Berkeley) might know where one can acquire a copy.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), May 09, 2004.


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