File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1997/97-03-08.144, message 89


Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 14:58:00 -0500 (EST)
From: John Sproule <jsproule-AT-usit.net>
Subject: Re: Power and Neutrality


I wanted to see if I could clarify my thinking on the possible relation
between the practice of psychotherapy and the kind of analysis that Foucault
practiced in such books as "Discipline and Punish" and "The History of
Sexuality", for example.  The comments of Miles Jackson and Gabriel Ash have
challenged me to sharpen up these vaque thoughts of mine.

What prompted me to mention these ideas were the thoughts by Pablo Otellado
about the relations between power, Foucault's concrete analysis of power in
specific contexts, and freedom.

>Personally, I think that Foucault had some kind of metaphysical
>obsession: on one hand his books represent an extensive work in showing
>the historicity and power contamination of what was then considered
>essential, universal and neutral; on the other hand his  criticism
>pointed to some kind of freedom that seems related to a surpassing of
>those contingent and power related situations -- surpassing that was
>possible by the very knowledge of its contingency and power
>contamination.

I am very sympathetic to Foucault's demonstrations of how power can best be
understood in terms of its subtle and productive aspects and his conclusion
tht the growth of the human sciences is intertwined with the workings of
this bio-power.  Whereas DP focuses on how the human sciences turn people
into individual objects by the application of its normalizing gaze, HS v1
takes on the even more subtle workings of confessional technology, the
process whereby people "internalize" a method of self-scrutiny under the
tutelage of a person deemed to have authority on these matters.

The question in my mind that provided the jumping off point for these
thoughts is concerned with whether one can do anything to resist or counter
these normalizing and subjectifying processes of bio-power.  Does the
process of bringing these process of bio-Power to light in any fashion give
an individual more autonomy or freedom of choice, for example?  I would like
to think that Foucault found it worthwhile to investigate and write about
these topics, because he believed that this did more than merely reinforce
the the kind of bio-power that he was describing.  Looking at his project in
this fashion, I see parallels to questions about insight-oriented
psychotherapy, e.g., is insight helpful for people trying to change their
behavior?

An important aspect of psychotherapy is that it takes place in and is based
upon a personal relationship.  This is where psychotherapy has the potential
for constantly questionning its assumptions and challenging the
conventional, including it own conventions.  There is an on-going tension
between the totalizing theories that accompany clinical practice and the
attitude that the clinician adopts with his or her patients in order to
learn from them what they need and who they are.  From this perspective,
focused on the therapy relationship, the expertise of the psychotherapist is
problematic insofar as it can take the therapist out of an open relationship
to the patient.  There is no fundamental reason why a critique, such as
Foucault's, concerned with how the expertise of the psychotherapist, for
example, may perpetuate certain social forces, cannot be taken up into this
process of constantly trying to understand the dynamics of the therapy
relationship.  

This points to an area that is rather neglected in Foucault's writing, that
is, the larger universe of relationships, beyond those based on the workings
of power.  What about the I-Thou sorts of relationships to be found in a
close friendship, for example?  Foucault's analysis of relationships does
take on a reductionistic quality, insofar as the larger background of how
people may potentially relate to one and other is not directly addressed.

John Sproule




   

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