On Sun, 9 Feb 1997 14:11:25 -0800 (PST), Miles Jackson wrote:
>How is what psychotherapists do like Foucault's work? Perhaps
>I am simplifying, but isn't most therapy more or less hermeneutics--
>looking for the "deep" meaning beneath the surface? This search for
>the underlying meaning of things like language and discourse is exactly
>the philosophical viewpoint that Foucault rails against in most of his
>books (see esp. arch. of knowledge). For Foucault, psychotherapy is
>a social practice and related discourse that we need to analyze (to
>understand, for instance, how various psychological types of individuals
>are produced in our society). I don't see how psychotherapy could be
>something that mirrors, say, Foucault's history of sexuality without
>undermining the guiding assumptions of therapeutic practice/discourse.
I agree with your description of what psychoteraphy is in F.'s terms, but:
if it is a discourse that generates effects of power, it follows that it can serve
variant and opposing strategies (just as the discourse of perversion can serve
both state agencies and gay liberation groups.) Psychotherapy can serve
the production of 'correct' individuals, and ipso facto, it can foreground this very
process and open possibilities of positioning oneself in relation to such production.
(That by doing it it may undermine its guiding assumption is no obstacle, for, being
commited to ideals of scientific self-problematisation, it has already the potential of
undoing itself well established.) Whether in practice psychoterapists do the first or
the second is an empirical question on which perhaps John Sproule can comment more.
John Sproul wrote:
>I've wondered something along similiar lines; does Foucault's work fall prey
>to his own criticism that he refers to as the "speaker's benefit" in HS I?
>In other words, of what use to us are his critiques and analyses? I would
>quess that in some manner they "empower" the reader, since knowledge is
>power. Yet, this becomes a very relative notion, as the point of his
>analysis is to emphasize how much we are entangled in subtle networks of power.
I tend to agree with the term of 'empowerment' while noting that it is just a potential.
the use of the critique is in the last analysis in the hands of the user. I prefer potential
to 'relative' since it is relative only to a liberal conception of freedom as being outside
power which F. opposed on Nietzchean first, and later on 'Greek' terms. There is nothing
bad in being entangled in networks of power, what is bad is being placed inside those
networks in a position where one's positive effect on the network are practically null.
I think F. analysed the role of expertise, i.e. expert discourse, in producing truth under
conditions
that by objectifying 'man' put people ideally in a position outside power, while actually
disempowering them. I am interesed in your ideas about alternative usage
of expertise in psychotherapy.
BTW I wouldn't be worried of the assertion that 'knowledge is power' as long as we all
understand that is a shorthand net-expression for a rather complex analysis, for taken literaly
it is rather misleading.
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------
>How is what psychotherapists do like Foucault's work? Perhaps
>I am simplifying, but isn't most therapy more or less hermeneutics--
>looking for the "deep" meaning beneath the surface? This search for
>the underlying meaning of things like language and discourse is exactly
>the philosophical viewpoint that Foucault rails against in most of his
>books (see esp. arch. of knowledge). For Foucault, psychotherapy is
>a social practice and related discourse that we need to analyze (to
>understand, for instance, how various psychological types of individuals
>are produced in our society). I don't see how psychotherapy could be
>something that mirrors, say, Foucault's history of sexuality without
>undermining the guiding assumptions of therapeutic practice/discourse.
I agree with your description of what psychoteraphy is in F.'s terms, but:
if it is a discourse that generates effects of power, it follows that it can serve
variant and opposing strategies (just as the discourse of perversion can serve
both state agencies and gay liberation groups.) Psychotherapy can serve
the production of 'correct' individuals, and ipso facto, it can foreground this very
process and open possibilities of positioning oneself in relation to such production.
(That by doing it it may undermine its guiding assumption is no obstacle, for, being
commited to ideals of scientific self-problematisation, it has already the potential of
undoing itself well established.) Whether in practice psychoterapists do the first or
the second is an empirical question on which perhaps John Sproule can comment more.
John Sproul wrote:
>I've wondered something along similiar lines; does Foucault's work fall prey
>to his own criticism that he refers to as the "speaker's benefit" in HS I?
>In other words, of what use to us are his critiques and analyses? I would
>quess that in some manner they "empower" the reader, since knowledge is
>power. Yet, this becomes a very relative notion, as the point of his
>analysis is to emphasize how much we are entangled in subtle networks of power.
I tend to agree with the term of 'empowerment' while noting that it is just a potential.
the use of the critique is in the last analysis in the hands of the user. I prefer potential
to 'relative' since it is relative only to a liberal conception of freedom as being outside
power which F. opposed on Nietzchean first, and later on 'Greek' terms. There is nothing
bad in being entangled in networks of power, what is bad is being placed inside those
networks in a position where one's positive effect on the network are practically null.
I think F. analysed the role of expertise, i.e. expert discourse, in producing truth under
conditions
that by objectifying 'man' put people ideally in a position outside power, while actually
disempowering them. I am interesed in your ideas about alternative usage
of expertise in psychotherapy.
BTW I wouldn't be worried of the assertion that 'knowledge is power' as long as we all
understand that is a shorthand net-expression for a rather complex analysis, for taken literaly
it is rather misleading.
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------