Jan. 25. Psychiatric Power (173-347)

STS 6534: Reading Foucault: Lectures at the Collège de France

Spring Semester 2011

*Jan. 25 Psychiatric Power, 173-347

[Fig 1] “Garden,” Interactive Artwork constituted by the collaborative action of technology and human (using Computer Vision System), Kohei Asano, 2005.

Depsychiatrization: the reversibility of surplus-power performed in the supplementary relationship of the psychiatry and the madness.

“Moment” of event where one becomes two as well as

that where two become one.[1]

1.

The relationship of psychiatry and the madness is supplementary. The supplementary relationship presents that life is not the One (totality came from the oneness, the knowledge of the One), but a performing one; what happens, Nietzschean event. The supplementation indicates that the relationship of the psychiatry and the madness is not in the binary field, the dualism. It overcomes the mutual degradation, the dichotomy between the doctor and the patient, and the madman and non-madman. Since, the supplementary relationship of the psychiatry and the madness always remains on “the borders of a manifestation of truth in accordance with the norms of knowledge and of a production of truth in the form of test, the latter always tending to hide behind and get its justification from the former.”[2] The endless reduplicating, the ambiguity is the supplementary relationship’s essential characteristic, distinctive nature, and specific development.

The supplementary relationship between the psychiatry and the madness weaves our reality; the knowledge-power system, the networked supplementary structure. It means that the reality is a network constituted by the performing of supplementary relationship, and then what we call the truth is a truth-event, not the truth in accordance with the norms of knowledge; what the truth is, the knowledge of truth underlined in the realm of representation. A truth-event is in the realm of presenting in the terms that insofar as a truth is performed as event, it cannot be represented.

When the reality is a network, and its truth is addressed in an event, we can say that the supplementary relationship between the psychiatry and the madness realizes our desire for escaping from the traumatic Real. In other words, we realize our desire through the struggle or battle between the psychiatry and the madness. The realization of desire is to avoid the Real and to restore of pleasure of madness. It articulates that what we call the reality is constituted by the Real. Here, the essential point is the positioning, that is, the questioning on the power-knowledge to set up “the position of the disease between life and death; the realization of desire, is this a fictitious problem, a question that arises only in utopia or not? [3]

2.

The supplementary relationship of the psychiatry and the madness can be considered as a sort of equipment for the questioning. It performs the role of revealing, producing, and testing of reality. First, the role of supplementation is to find a hidden truth through observation and contemplation, not in its true or false contents, but in the supplementary relationship; it calls into question knowledge itself, the form of knowledge, the subject-object norm; the questioning evokes the crisis as the critique on the power-knowledge.

Secondly, the supplementation makes the truth visible; the visualization, its effect produces the truth in enclosed and fettered truth; the staging the absolute as a myth of ambiguity. Finally, the supplementary relationship functions a sort of testing (proof) of a truth to be manifested in the performing of doubleness and produced through its visualizing.

3.

What is at stake in the performing of supplementary relationship, the “truth-production,” (the redoubling) is the surplus-power.[4] The paradoxical effect of psychiatric surplus-power prompts the form of depsychiatrization as a process essential to the cure in terms of the reconciliation between psychiatric power and the madness. The depsychiatrization intervenes between two events; transference and antipsychiatry.

First event is that the depsychiatrization involves the transference for guaranteeing the truth in reality and preventing the production of truth from becoming a counter-power that traps, nullifies and overturns the psychiatric power. Here, the crucial point is that as a direct action to form a count part, the transference invokes the antipsychiatry. This is the second event in the relation of depsychiatrization.

The antipsychiatry is originated from the inside of psychiatric power. It is an internal systematic destruction through struggle with, in, and against the institution as site, form of distribution, and mechanism of psychiatric power. The heart of antipsychiatry is that it spells out the reversible power (reversibility) of psychiatry. It attacks “the truth value of psychiatry in terms of knowledge;”[5] it neutralizes the statement of truth in the moral treatment or judgment such as the accuracy of diagnosis, effectiveness of therapy.

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[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 180.

[2] Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 19 December 1973, ed. Jacques Lagrange, trans. Graham Burchell, (New York: PICADOR, 2006) 335.

[3] Foucault, Ibid, 336.

[4] Foucault, Ibid, 340

[5] Foucault, Ibid, 344.

Jan. 18. Psychiatric Power (1-171)

[Fig 1.] THE INHERENT BEAUTY IN A FAILED ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT, Jonathan Schipper, (http://www.oppositionart.com)

Psychiatric Power: The Doubleness of Power of Psychiatric Treatment Doctoring the Madness.

‘The madness overcomes the patient.’

Michel Foucault analyzed the treatment of madness. He defined the treatment doctoring the madness as psychiatric power. What he wants to speak, what is said through the analysis of psychiatric power/knowledge is the symptom of madness, the madness itself.

In the lecture of 19 December 1973, Foucault emphasizes that the madness is a new illness overcoming the patient. It customizes the psychiatric power performed by disciplinary apparatuses as a sort of tactics and strategies to break down the pleasure of madness traversing between the real and reality. It means that insofar as the knowledge of madness can not catch the madness, the madness remains in the pleasure.

The psychiatric power conceals the omnipotence that madness is beyond the psychiatric power, and reversely, the concealment reveals a truth that the pleasure of madness ensures our life.

The truth of psychiatric power involves with both aspects of concealing and revealing. It can be called as the doubleness of power of psychiatric treatment doctoring the madness.

In 1840, the psychiatrist, F. Leuret noticed “the unfortunate sign” of essence of madness, and noted that “a new illness was overcoming the patient.”[1] This analysis notices that the madness is the pleasure, and the pleasure is superior to the psychiatric power/knowledge system depending on disciplinary apparatuses.

In order to avoid the omnipotence of madness, the pleasure of illness overcoming the patient, human developed the constitution of psychiatric knowledge. The psychiatric power is a flow, network. It is “a question of a sort of great single body” organized by disciplinary apparatuses as a sort of tactical procedures and strategic elements.[2]

The essential function of psychiatric power is an effective agent of reality, a sort of intensifier of reality to madness. It is to impose and intensify the reality. It means that the psychiatric power is the supplement of power added to reality, and its aim is to reproduce the reality within the reality.

As the real form of reality itself and simultaneously the surplus power of reality, the psychiatric power prohibits the taking the pleasure of madness, and the other side, it accelerates the pleasure of madness originated from the essential lack of being.[3]

The doubleness of psychiatric power takes place in the form of charging discourse. It has a performative character in the game of the cure, since the patient must not perceives, but identify his biographical reality if he wants to be cured. It presents that the psychiatric power is a sort of action of confession, and thus it has to be addressed in the analyzing of symptom.

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[1] Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 19 December 1973, p. 164.

[2] M. Foucault, Ibid, p. 164.

[3] The word, lack is used in the concept of Lacanian, not Sartrian.