ABSTRACT
Despite their profound influences on contemporary theories of identity, psychoanalytic and Foucauldian perspectives differ on a rather central issue: When it comes to understanding human sexuality and experiences of madness, does the logic of psychic interiority help philosophical and psychological theory in thinking about identity’s relation to sexuality and madness? This chapter argues that the dispute between Foucault and psychoanalysis on sex, madness, and interiority is best understood as a disagreement over the methodological limits of philosophy and psychology. After outlining Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis and Foucault’s favorable reception in contemporary antipsychiatry and queer theory, it examines Derrida, Butler, and Whitebook as respondents to Foucault’s critiques from a psychoanalytic perspective. Looking then to the trenchant criticism of both Derrida and psychoanalysis by Huffer, this chapter supports the claim that Foucauldian and psychoanalytic perspectives cannot be synthesized without ignoring essential features of their theories. It ultimately argues that by eschewing the limitations of psychic interiority, Foucault misses the ways that psychoanalysis critiques discourse on madness and sex through interiority itself, which in turn resists the ideological silencing of madness and sexuality.
