ABSTRACT
Foucault’s critique is aimed at some versions of psychoanalysis (Freud) but not others (Lacan), to our mind the best interpretation of Foucault’s own position on psychoanalysis deploys the psychoanalytic concept of ambivalence. As Foucault himself put this point: “psychoanalysis has undoubtedly been the practice and the theory that has reevaluated in the most fundamental way the somewhat sacred priority conferred on the subject, which has become established in Western thought since Descartes”. In passages such as this one it seems clear that the primary target of Foucault’s critique is not so much the psychoanalytic concept of repression per se but rather the juridical model of power on which the repressive hypothesis rests. Foucault’s critique of the Freudian account of resistance, on the other hand, seems to be based on the assumption that Freud held a rather simplistic understanding of drive.
