ABSTRACT
A dialogue with Michel Foucault, David Cooper, Jean-Pierre Faye, Marie-Odile Faye and Marine Zecca. 1
Foucault engages here in an acrimonious attack on the psychiatric establishment. Starting from the hypothesis that psychiatrists are always functionaries of the social order, Foucault claims that the imperative to “medically” police both private and social hygiene is not an aberration particular only to Soviet life. From the outset, psychiatry regarded itself as responsible for identifying and supervising those who were considered as dangerous from both penal and medical perspectives. More recently, as Foucault suggests, a discourse on sexuality has emerged that has become one of general psychiatrization functioning as a means to police public health. To transcend this cancerous bureaucracy the intellectual must extricate himself from the ideological basis of dissidence and engage in a radical analysis of the networks of power as they pass through the body.
Originally published as “Enfermement, psychiatrie, prison,” this dialogue appeared in a special issue of Change 32—33 (1977), 76—110 179 on “La Folie encerclée”. This translation is by Alan Sheridan.
