Yes, but the illness itself is a social phenomenon--and not a so-called "natural" one separated from its cultural elements. Take your example, "depression": the reason biochemical imbalances are predominant in our contemporary societies is the social experience of watching TV, movies, and other media associated with emotional manipulation --and the associated increase in levels of biochemcial/endocrinal/hormonal activity (dopamine, adenaline, acetylcholine, as well as testosterone, serotonin, etc.). So it is always a social reality--which is historical -- and not some natural reality that can explain illness, etc. And thus it is not always disciplinary power that can explain something like "medecine", although many of the geneological studies of Foucault focused on social-historical settings when disciplinarity was emerging... The best place to start exploring your question in Foucault is the very short "Maladie mentale et psychologie" and " naisance de la clinique."
Fouad Kalouche
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> From: ecomst@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:32:54 -0400
> Subject: [Foucault-L] Foucault and Psychoactive Medicine
>
> I have a general sense from Psychiatric Power and other works that
> Foucault argues that medicine, in early psychiatric practice and until
> around the mid-twentieth century or so, has mostly only a disciplinary
> function. And for this reason, medicine in psychiatry is frequently not
> understood to actually act on or "cure" the underlying disorder, but
> rather to, say, curb or eradicate unwanted behaviors, or to reproduce
> certain effects of the disorder, or serve as the test of the disorder. But
> now we can see drugs working at a "deeper" level, often, ostensibly, at
> the very level of the "organic lesion," as with drugs that are understood
> to work on brain chemical imbalances that cause, say, depression.
>
> So my question is, can anybody recommend any research on the role of drugs
> in psychiatry and the movement towards drugs as a kind of "cure" of the
> disorder rather than as a disciplinary technology? Or does anybody know a
> place where Foucault is clear about his position on this?
>
> Any thoughts well appreciated!
>
>
> _____________________
> Ed Comstock
> College Writing Program
> Department of Literature
> American University
> ------------------------------------
> The easy possibility of letter writing must--seen theoretically--have
> brought into the world a terrible dislocation of souls. It is, in fact, an
> intercourse with ghosts, and not only with the ghost of the recipient, but
> also with one's own ghost... How on earth did anybody get the idea that
> people can communicate with each other by letter!--Franz Kafka
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