At 03:08 AM 7/17/96 GMT, sbinkley@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
[Initial paragraphs deleted.]
>Sure, surveillance might have been important in 18 th century france, but
>is it really helpful, 200 years later, in understanding how power operates
>in the normalization of subjects? I think this is one of the most common
>mistakes made in applying the definition of disciplinary power offered in
>Discipline and PUnish: all those mechanisms were only the occassion of the
>emergence of disciplinary regimes, and should not be turned to as the quick
>and easy reference points for an analysis of power in the present.
>
>My question: Is this error evident in this exchange?
>
>sb
>
>
I think that your point is well taken. It is too easy to reduce current
circumstances to mechanisms that only become apparent in an analysis of the
past. Yet, I think that this is some of what Foucault was trying to do in
Discipline and Punish. He was very interested in prison reform as a
contemporary issue, and I believe that he used his historical study of
punishment as a way to make more apparent mechanisms that are so inherent in
our current situation that they are taken for granted and often overlooked.
I admit that my borrowing from Foucault's analysis of disciplinary power and
applying this to managed care and psychotherapy was crude and without
subtlety, but I think that the three "minor procedures" of heirarchical
observation, normalizing judgement, and their coming together in the
procedure of the examination do make more understandable the nature of the
impingement of managed care on the practicing psychotherapist.
What I remain most fascinated by is how the very disciplinary techniques
that the institutionalized human sciences have grown up with now seem to be
operating to bring these groups to heel. I acknowledge that trying to say
much more about the forces at work in this contemporary scene is at best
speculative. One can observe the ebb and flow of power between groups or
institutions, but describing the currents carrying these forces is beyond
any comprehensive perspective that I can imagine.
My reason for turning to Foucault on this issue of managed care and
psychotherapy was based on a hope that his ideas might make more
understandable to myself and my colleagues how it was that the practice of
psychotherapy has changed so dramatically in the past few years. Foucault's
ideas on bio-power suggest that the processes at work are more pervasive and
familiar than one might initially suspect.
John Sproule
Knoxville, TN
[Initial paragraphs deleted.]
>Sure, surveillance might have been important in 18 th century france, but
>is it really helpful, 200 years later, in understanding how power operates
>in the normalization of subjects? I think this is one of the most common
>mistakes made in applying the definition of disciplinary power offered in
>Discipline and PUnish: all those mechanisms were only the occassion of the
>emergence of disciplinary regimes, and should not be turned to as the quick
>and easy reference points for an analysis of power in the present.
>
>My question: Is this error evident in this exchange?
>
>sb
>
>
I think that your point is well taken. It is too easy to reduce current
circumstances to mechanisms that only become apparent in an analysis of the
past. Yet, I think that this is some of what Foucault was trying to do in
Discipline and Punish. He was very interested in prison reform as a
contemporary issue, and I believe that he used his historical study of
punishment as a way to make more apparent mechanisms that are so inherent in
our current situation that they are taken for granted and often overlooked.
I admit that my borrowing from Foucault's analysis of disciplinary power and
applying this to managed care and psychotherapy was crude and without
subtlety, but I think that the three "minor procedures" of heirarchical
observation, normalizing judgement, and their coming together in the
procedure of the examination do make more understandable the nature of the
impingement of managed care on the practicing psychotherapist.
What I remain most fascinated by is how the very disciplinary techniques
that the institutionalized human sciences have grown up with now seem to be
operating to bring these groups to heel. I acknowledge that trying to say
much more about the forces at work in this contemporary scene is at best
speculative. One can observe the ebb and flow of power between groups or
institutions, but describing the currents carrying these forces is beyond
any comprehensive perspective that I can imagine.
My reason for turning to Foucault on this issue of managed care and
psychotherapy was based on a hope that his ideas might make more
understandable to myself and my colleagues how it was that the practice of
psychotherapy has changed so dramatically in the past few years. Foucault's
ideas on bio-power suggest that the processes at work are more pervasive and
familiar than one might initially suspect.
John Sproule
Knoxville, TN