Psychoanalysis of Foucault's Concepts

By Maryam Mahdavi and Seyed Mohsen Mousavifard

This book wants to implement psychoanalysis based on Lacan's point of view on the procedures of power, self, punish and sexuality concepts that are the basis of the social order; in other words, it is the combination of Foucault's self and punish, sexuality with psychoanalysis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359606108

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Psychoanalysis of Foucault's Concepts

PSYCHOANALYSIS of Foucault's Concepts

Maryam Mahdavi

Seyedmohsen Mousavifard

Copyright

PUBLISHED BY LULU PUBLISHING PLATFORM

Lulu Press, Inc.

Morrisville, North Carolina, United States

Copyright © 2019  Maryam Mahdavi and Seyedmohsen Mousavifard

All rights reserved. This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements; no part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover design and edition by Day System Research Center Experts;   Tel: [phone]

Publication Date: 2019

ISBN: 978-0-359-60610-8

All rights reserved.

To

My Family

Preface

The individual has always been exposed to the challenges in social institutions. Michel Foucault is largely concerned with the relation between social structures and institutions and the individual and the effects of them on groups of people and the role that those people play in affirming or resisting those effects. Both of the novels are analyzed based on Foucault’s conceptions of self and punish. This book shows that the procedures of power are at the basic level of the social order where it produces its own kinds of bodies that conform to its demands and needs based on psychoanalysis; in other words, it is the combination of Foucault's self and punish, sexuality and psychoanalysis. Foucault presents a history of changes that cause alterations in modes of thinking.

Mahdavi- 2019

Chapter One

Introduction

To Foucault

&

Psychoanalysis

General Overview to Foucault

How has the nature of human functioned in the society? In order to answer this question on must find the underlying relations which are at work and discover how the society operates.

Punishment was also a 'policy of terror', designed to intimidate the rest of the population  (Foucault,1977: p 49).  Punishment therefore has functions for the current system, and cannot be seen as some simple residue from an uncivilised past. The ceremonial involved was meticulous and often involved the military, not just to control the crowd but to demonstrate the end of a symbolic war declared by the criminal. The contemptuous treatment of the criminal sometimes extended even after death.

Self and punishment have always been important issues for the human beings. But how these work to lead man to his ends and destiny is the matter of significance.

What this book scrutinizes is the way the concepts of punish and self-drive man to different directions and to draw a distinction between the actual operation of them within a specific discipline at a particular moment with having psychoanalysis in mind.

On the other hand, Foucault, in his theories, is mainly concerned with the same issues and how they are nourished and how they oblige the individuals to nourish them.

Michel Foucault is one of the most important figures in critical theory. He was born in Poitiers, France in 1926. Most of his academic training was in philosophy, after his first degree he trained for a higher degree in psychology and a diploma in pathological psychology.

He completed his PhD on madness and reason and published it as Madness and Civilization in 1961. In the following year, he published a book on the work of the poet Raymond Roussel, and in 1963 he published The Birth of the Clinic.

In 1966, he moved to Tunisia to teach, returning to France to become the head of philosophy at Vincennes University. In 1969 he published The Archaeology of Knowledge and in 1970 he became chair of the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France.

In 1975 he published Discipline and Punish and in 1976 be began the publication of the three-volume History of Sexuality; he died in 1984 (Michel Foucault 12-13).  He has influenced a great deal of post-structuralist, feminist, post-modernist, post-Marxist and post-colonial theorizing.

The impact of his work has also been felt across a wide range of disciplinary fields, from sociology to English studies and history (Michel Foucault 1).

However, the nonconforming and challenging nature of Foucault’s theoretical work has caused that his ideas have not simply been agreed on. Instead, they have caused dynamic and productive hot debates.

His books Madness and Civilization (1967) and Discipline and Punish (1975), are historical analysis of social conditions; however his work is not only, for example, an analysis of the difference between madness and reason, but it is also an analysis of the way that we think about insanity and the level to which society regulates the distinction and keep that conceptual distinction in place (Michel Foucault 2).

The most interesting part of Foucault’s work is his skepticism, and this skepticism leads to a concern to