Essay Review: Michel Foucault and the History of Psychoanalysis: The Order of Things

Foucault M. , The order of things (London, 1970). The passages most relevant to psychoanalysis are to be found in the two final chapters, “Man and his doubles”, and “The human sciences”.

The order of things, 313.

The ‘physiological/pathological’ distinction was peculiar to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it corresponded roughly to the later ‘normal/pathological’ distinction, but had the advantage of placing ‘physiological’ within the discipline ‘physiology’, and ‘pathological’ within ‘pathology’.

The order of things, 361.

The order of things, 373.

The critical function that Foucault assigns to psychoanalysis has affinities with the critical self-reflexivity that Jürgen Habermas looks to psychoanalysis to provide; see his Knowledge and human interests (1968; English translation, London, 1972), 214ff.

Foucault M. , La volonté de savoir (Paris, 1976; English translation as The history of sexuality, vol. i, London, 1979). I shall refer to the translation as Sex, and to the original as VS.

The shift of interest is even more clearly seen in Foucault's previous book, Surveillir et punir (Discipline and punish), in which the historical shift discussed in more general terms in VS—from the subject as constituted by law to the subject as constituted by a set of essential properties which are the objects of knowledge embodied in various sciences of man—this shift is demonstrated to be part of the development of various legal and punitive measures from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

These two themes—illness and crime—had been the objects of study of two previous works of Foucault's—respectively, The birth of the clinic (Paris, 1963; English translation, 1973), and Discipline and punish (Paris, 1975; English translation, London, 1977). The manner in which Foucault characterizes the shift from eighteenth to nineteenth century modes of knowledge has not essentially changed from the early works of the 1960s: The idea of a hidden cause, the seat of disease, the seat of criminal desires, has been central to his account of nineteenth century science, and can be seen argued most clearly in The order of things (ref. 1).

Sex, 93; VS, 123.

This particular discussion is particularly relevant to recent psychoanalytic debates in France, a debate which Foucault is well aware of: “the assertion that sex is not ‘repressed’ is not altogether new. Psychoanalysts have been saying the same thing for some time.” Sex, 81ff.; VS, 107ff.

Sex, 65–68; VS, 87–90.

The idea that there is something about sex that is linguistically recalcitrant is often found in Freud. Lacan makes it more explicit by tying the division of the subject instaurated by language to the operation of castration.

Freud S. , “Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis” (1909d), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols, London, 1953–74), x, 155–249, p. 166.

Rieff Philip , Freud, the mind of the moralist (London, 1960).

Sex, 131; VS, 172.

Sex, 119; VS, 157–8. The first line of this paragraph includes a grave mistranslation: “psychiatry” being given for “psychanalyse”.

Freud S. , The origins of psychoanalysis (London, 1954), 216: Letter of 21 September, 1897.

Sex, 112–13; VS, 148–9. Translation modified.

Sex, 150; VS, 198.

Freud S. , “‘Civilized’ sexual morality and modern nervous illness” (1908d), Standard edition (ref. 14), ix, 181–204.

Freud S. , “Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety” (1926d), Standard edition (ref. 14), xx, 87–172, pp. 163–4.

Freud S. , “The future of an illusion” (1927c), Standard edition (ref. 14), xxi, 5–56, p. 53.

Foucault M. , “Le jeu de Michel Foucault”, Ornicar?, x (1976), 62–93.

Representative examples of these historical works are: Amacher Peter , “Freud's neurological education and its influence on psychoanalytic theory”, Psychological issues, iv (1965), monograph 16; Andersson Ola , Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis (Stockholm, 1962); Cranefield Paul , “The organic physics of 1847 and the biophysics of today”, Journal for the history of medicine, xii (1957), 407–23; Ellenberger Henri F. , The discovery of the unconscious. The history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry (London, 1970).

See ch. v of my book, Language and the origins of psychoanalysis (London, 1980), and Burrow John , “The uses of philology in Victorian England”, in Robson R. (ed.), Ideas and institutions of Victorian Britain (London, 1967), 180–204.

Sex, 130; VS, 172. Translation modified.

See, for instance, Reich's The mass psychology of Fascism (Berlin, 1933; English translation, New York, 1946).

Lacan Jacques , “Le mythe individuel du névrosé ou ‘Poésie et vérité dans la névrose” (Paris: Centre de la Documentation Universitaire, 1953 (mimeo)), 4. A longer discussion of the occlusion of the ideal father will be found in the articles Lacan wrote in 1938 for the Encyclopédie française (Paris, 1938), vol. viii, “La vie mentale”, under the title ’La famile‘: 8.40.3–8.40.16; 8.42.1–8.42.8.