Hi Kevin,
Somebody must have mentioned it by now but the reason Foucault revised and renamed Maladie Mentale et Personnalité of 1954 into Maladie Mentale et Psychologie in 1962 is precisely to clarify old (fashionable Marxian) language such as the one you refer to here ("conditions exterieures et objectives"). Just read the 1962 version and everything will be clear: You are translating the last sentence of the first part that introduces the second part to follow. The first part covers the psychological dimensions of mental illness and the second part covers the cultural-historical element or mental illness as a fact of civilisation. In the 1962 revision, Foucault replaces the sentence you are translating here with a clear reference to the social-historical domain that determines meanings associated with mental illness (refer to page 69 of the Quadrifge/PUF 4th edition published in 2008).
In other words, the first part which is about mental illness and evolution, individual history, and existence represents "les dimensions exterieures." The second part is about the historical constitution of mental illness (what we call today social construction) and the global structure of madness (only in history can one find a concrete a priori shaping mental illness) and thus "conditions exterieures et objectives" represents historical determination...
Hope this helps.
Fouad Kalouche
> Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:27:13 -0800
> From: kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité
>
> 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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