Re: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité


Hi Kevin
 
My current research focus is on mental illness (to be unspecific) using Foucault (along with Habermas and Deleuze)
 
However I am in the early stages so my Foucault is limited to M&C, BoC, D&P and P/K, Foucault Reader.
 
I am also currently relearning French from O level to read Foucault in French, so my translation skills are poor (although I understand the translating you have done)
 
However my understanding comes from broad readings on mental health (inc Porter and Scull) as well as Foucault. However in particular I am using Foucault to analyse Hearing Voices groups the modus operandi of which is to treat 'pathological' experiences as real (actually the argument is on their pathology hence my interest in Foucault).
 
Thus your argument that Foucault could be alluding to a difference between the 'phenomenological' exterior and the 'real' exterior makes perfect sense to me.
 
However so does the idea that it is a typo. The first 'exterior' actually being 'interior' also makes logical sense.
 
Of course the original source would be the best bet. Is that manuscript, notes or lecture notes in which case... I see the problem
 
If it is ambiguous due to the source, my two cents worth is the understanding that the interior solution comes from the basic understanding that has become opposed to what is occasionally called the medical model (discourses/ epistemes including neuroscience, genetics etc) that experience, the lifeworld, affects the mentally ill person and their experiences. So from Tukes through Laing to the current UK government proposals known as New Horizons (until the election). However even this humanist episteme treats the internal experience of the mentally ill person as pathological as opposed to normal. But it makes perfect epistemic sense to therefore translate as 'interior' and would explain why many have.
 
However there is current understanding, especially amongst ex-service users/ survivors that in fact these experiences are 'real' in the phenomenological sense, the Hearing Voices Movement is pushing for hearing voices to be understood as part of the normal range of human experiences. Therefore the line between interior and exterior becomes blurred. However it is my understanding of Foucault (and Canguilhelm as well?) that this chimes with his understanding of normality/ pathology, chimes in tune if not the same note anyway. So it is perfectly possible given Foucault's interest in subjugated knowledges that it was originally exterieur in the first place.
 
I am going to get the Bernauer book out tomorrow and have a look as this is interesting to me
 
I'd be interested on what you settle on
 
best regards
 
Alastair Kemp

--- On Tue, 23/2/10, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


From: Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité
To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, 23 February, 2010, 8:27


Foucault concludes the final chapter (‘Le maladie et l’existance’) of Part One (‘Les dimensions psychologique de la maladie’) of Maladie mentale et personnalité with the following statment :

‘Mais c’est peut-être toucher là un des paradoxes de la maladie mentale qui contraignent à de nouvelles formes d’analyses : si cette subjectivité de l’insensé est, en même temps, vocation et abandon au monde, n’est-ce pas au monde lui-même qu’il faut demander le secret de cette subjectivité énigmatique ? Après en avoir explore les dimensions extérieures, n’est-on pas amené forcément à considérer ses conditions extérieures et objectives ?’ (Mmp: 69).

Which I have translated as follows:

But here we have perhaps touched upon one of the paradoxes of mental illness that demands new forms of analysis: if the subjectivity of the insane is, at the same time, a call to and an abandonment of the world, is it not of the world itself that we should ask the secret of this enigmatic subjectivity? After having explored the external dimensions, are we not necessarily led to consider its exterior and objective conditions?

Now my question concerns the first external/exterior (extérieures) in the last sentence.
I have read a number of texts that have suggested that this is actually a misprint and should read internal/interior (intérieures) (e.g. Bernauer, J. W., Michel Foucault’s Force of Flight, London, 1990: 187).
I have also read a number of texts which have simply rendered this as internal without explanation.

So, my question is, is this a misprint or not?

What Foucault discusses in this chapter is the twin tasks of a phenomenology of mental illness: noetic – noematic (Mmp: 55-56). The first of these tasks aims to describe the experience that the ill person has of their illness; the second attempts to analyse the existential structured of the experienced pathological world: Umwelt, Mitwelt, Eigenwelt (61-64, 64-65, 65-67 respectively).

Could not the first external in the last sentence cited above be referring to this noematic analysis? Since what it addresses are the contradictions between the experienced pathological world and the real world. And so this last sentence could read:

“After having explored the external dimensions [the pathological world], are we not necessarily led to consider its exterior and objective conditions [the real world]?”

I may be totally wrong about this, which is why I wanted to see what others had to say before I proceed any further.

Regards,
Kevin.

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