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Echapper à la psychanalyse
"Relisant les Fragments d'un discours amoureux de Roland Barthes et le premier volume de l'Histoire de la sexualité de Michel Foucault, Didier Eribon dégage le geste politique et théorique commun qui les sous-tend : une volonté de résister au freudo-marxisme de l'après-mai 1968 et, plus généralement, d'échapper à l'emprise de la psychanalyse. À un moment où, dans le sillage de la théorie queer, la pensée radicale se tourne à nouveau vers la psychanalyse, ce texte bref prend la valeur d'un manifeste en proposant de réactiver au contraire le mouvement de fuite à l'égard de cette dernière qui a caractérisé la philosophie des années 1970.
96 pages, Paperback
First published May 21, 2005
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July 27, 2026
I was quite excited reading the book because of the title Escaping Psychoanalysis, because I felt like I had been very trapped in a sense in a psychoanalytical framework. Maybe because it is so effective. But nonetheless, I wanted to explore other possibilities of a potential ‚escape‘, and this title was really attractive to me because of that , but in the end, I was very disappointed by the book.
It's out in German by the publisher Turia + Kant, which always produces very beautiful books with very beautiful covers, typesetting and paper choices. But beneath this wonderful aesthetic level, even though that book is a very fun and quick read, it really offers nothing new. It promises a radical critique of psychoanalysis, but instead reproduces familiar objections in an exaggerated form. It mistakes the abuse of psychoanalysis outside the clinic for psychoanalysis itself — which Maybe is the most important insight it nonetheless produces for Freudians — , offers almost no positive alternative, and therefore ultimately remains as reductive as what it criticizes.
All the critiques that are formulated are the standard arguments, sadly explored very surface-level here:
1. you got the argument that psychoanalysis has a normalizing function, that marks sickness and deviancy as not normal and is there to make you „normal“ again.
2. Or you also have the critique that psychoanalysis is patriarchal, based on heteronormativity,
3. and also you have the common critique that is prominent even outside of theory circles that psychoanalysis only looks for causes, but this looking for causes in the end traps you in the cause.
4. Also it is a reductive kind of discourse that reduces everything to the Oedipal triad, which is in essence just the patriarchal family.
5. And there is also the next critique point, that this very patriarchal family is in essence universal and unchangeable.
These very common critiques of psychoanalysis are multiplied to the max by the author with frankly very absurd statements, like that the entire oeuvre of Lacan is just an attempt to mark and differentiate homosexuality from heterosexuality, and homosexuality as sickness, and treating sexual difference as unchangeable or the potential change of sexual difference as something that is destructive to society. And I think it will be very easy to debunk these claims, especially when we're talking about Lacan … some of these claims certainly.
I wanted to read this book because I feel like there is some grain of truth in these criticisms, which isn't well executed or well explored here, but nonetheless these are things that I feel like are critical about psychoanalysis, for example. Yes, sexual difference is essential to psychoanalysis. You can't get rid of sexual difference. And also the structure is always something that is like father, mother, child, and maybe also the hierarchy between the different clinical structures of psychosis, perversion, and neurosis suggest a normality or teleology. All these are issues I wonder about and wonder what to do with it. There’s where I was looking for answers here.
But, especially in regards to Lacan, I don't feel like they are very helpfully addressed in this work because hier critiques are made very reductive. I felt like it was a very similar kind of critique to early, very vulgar materialism, for example, in regards to religion.
For example, in famous American labor movement songs from back in the day, where religion is nothing more than a kind of ideological program to make you obedient, make you happy with your life because you will get your reward after death And for example, religion teaches you to be obedient to your boss just like to God. And these critiques are necessary. Yes, religion served that purpose. On the other hand, it's also highly reductive. There's much more going on.
In liberation theology, we can see that the whole discourse of religion can be utilized in different ways, especially with Christianity, or also Islam has that possibility. These approaches analyse and read the discourse of religion in a liberatory way, without betraying it or completely getting rid of it, which is an approach that the author aggressively criticizes. He wants to get rid of it completely. This is not something like a Hegelian Aufhebung. It is just normal negation, which as we know will always do the opposite of its intention.
And this I feel is a big problem. Not only that his critique of psychoanalysis is not very good. And you have this very aggressive language, like calling this terrorism or violence. Which, yes, maybe in some regard, but you can't just throw it completely out of the window without answering what psychoanalysis is, how it developed, with what aim? They are completely ignoring the most famous insights of psychoanalysis which are very much against the patriarchal dogma of the time. Especially, it's in many ways very progressive.
For example, a very famous quote from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, where Freud says homosexuality is just as much in question as heterosexuality, that homosexuality is in need of explanation. In a way to say, there's no difference, there are no naturalities about heterosexuality in this regard. All these forms have to be explained in the same way. All have to be questioned.
And I can very much sympathize with this, especially him being from France, because it is true that in France, psychoanalysis, especially with people like Jacques-Alain Miller, is very much conservative.
It can be very conservative. And it can have that very arrogant function of looking down on other people, at other theories, and completely shaming them with arrogance, but this book, to be honest, is not doing anything other than that, just in the other direction. So I can understand his anger because yes, there's a long tradition in France of socially very conservative psychoanalysis.
But nonetheless, it would be wrong to just throw psychoanalysis out completely just because of that. Because you can find much more in it. And in that sense, maybe it can be a trap. You can be trapped because there's so much to discover. So much to read in it, do something with it. So it can be trapping, and I can understand that this author felt trapped and wanted to escape, especially in a country that is very, very, very much influenced by psychoanalytic discourse in their culture.
But it is his choice to let psychoanalysis appear and be read as these conservatives do, he capitulates before them and instead takes the stance of a rebel. There is the possibility of a liberatory reading of psychoanalysis. The author chooses to accept the conservative reading. It’s his choice to do so.
To claim that psychoanalysis, for example, has the function to mark the pathological as pathological and create normality, is absurd. Lacan, especially, is very clear about that this is not the goal of psychoanalysis. The goal of psychoanalysis is to, in practice, give you a savoir-faire, a way to deal with your pathology.
It doesn't heal you. On the other hand, also the quote-unquote normal position of subjectivity in and of itself is already pathological. Because it is split, because it has an ontogenesis. Ontogenesis is something that this author feels is critical because he feels like by investigating the ontogenesis of the subject, you in essence reduce the subject to this ontogenesis, to the cause of what's going on.
That is one of the standard critiques I formulated above, that psychoanalysis is very focused on explaining origins. This is, I think, maybe one of the things that this author is angry about the most. Because he feels like psychoanalysis looks for causes.
And by finding causes it reduces the things that the individual subject is doing through these causes. So psychoanalysis says, this and that happened in your childhood and this is the true meaning of what you're doing.
And I feel like this not wanting to look into causes because it feels like causes are reductive, and are trapping, is a trap in itself because I think this is very much a liberal framework, instead of a radical framework, because radical in essence means the root of something.
So the question of Marxism and the question of Freudianism, which are two things that are criticized by this author, is to look into the roots, to the reasons, to the causes of things. And of course it's kind of annoying that there are two sides in continental philosophy: the ones that hate psychoanalysis and the other that think psychoanalysis is the ultimate thing. Both of these sides, of course, like denouncing the other side as not being radical or being critically lacking.
But I think, going to the etymology of radical, the root, it's very wrong to just want to get rid of looking for causes. he argues for affect without understanding or explanation.
And that's the central problem that this author kind of ignores, just as he ignores a lot of other things in the history of psychoanalysis. And it's very much maybe the problem of this philosopher because he falls for this kind of applied psychoanalysis, for this wild and applied psychoanalysis. But it is also the issue of French authors like Jacques-Alain Miller, who do apply psychoanalysis to culture.
And that is the main issue, but what I was most sad about was that this book, as the first pages indicate, is very much a negative theology of love, right? It just doesn't really articulate that much about a positive theory. And I think the best chapter was the chapter on Roland Barthes' Fragments of a Lover's Discourse, which tried to indicate a positive kind of discourse about love, which again had the issue of ignoring causes, but that's fine.
And I think the last few pages about Foucault were very weird because in the chapter about Roland it indicated that he is very much in defense of romantic love against the kind of weird cynical sexual liberation of the '68 movement. But then when you read the few lines on Foucault's positive theory of how we should look at the psyche... I mean, that's even more than psychoanalysis's reduction to causes, because there are no causes except the discourse of power, which is a disciplinary discourse, so everything you do or the love you might feel, or the soul searching you do... well, it's all the discourse of power, so don't invest too much time in it. Which is just even more cynical, I feel like. Where are the pure affects of love he spoke of before in that?
Even though psychoanalysis looks at causes, I feel like psychoanalysis is never reductive to these causes. If we now for a moment ignore that it actually can only be correct if it is effective in the clinic... I feel like psychoanalysis is never reductive. And if you view it as reductive, well, you're getting it wrong. Because yes, a cause and origin isn't the truth.
It is psychoanalysis, especially with the Oedipus complex, the Name-of-the-Father, all this stuff. It articulates something like what Kant articulates about the transcendental aesthetic. It's the condition of possibility for your specific cognition of the world, for your reality as the interaction between the imaginary and the symbolic.
And in essence also for true romantic love. I don't think that true romantic love is impossible for psychoanalysis. It is very much possible. The only thing is its condition of possibility is the Oedipus complex, is the Name-of-the-Father, all that stuff. It's a condition of possibility, but from this condition of possibility arises something qualitatively different. And I feel like this author completely ignores that.
And also you could criticize these different diagnoses as hierarchical. On the top you have hysteria and neurosis, on the bottom your psychoses. And in some parts Lacan very much agreed with that, but in essence, all these diagnoses are just different modes that take part in the thing that is at the root of this ontogenesis of the subject. They meet the cause, the Name-of-the-Father and all. So they all take part in that just in different modes, and I feel like that's very much articulated in the late seminars by Lacan.
So to finish up. It was a fun read, it was entertaining, but it was infuriating because it had no positive theory and the critique of psychoanalysis was very, very reductive. And I feel like I've got to find a solution on where to get a positive theory of something like the ontogenesis of the subject. And maybe a critique of psychoanalysis that isn't so happy about completely getting rid of the causes. Guess I godda read the whole canon to then finally crack D&G open.
It's out in German by the publisher Turia + Kant, which always produces very beautiful books with very beautiful covers, typesetting and paper choices. But beneath this wonderful aesthetic level, even though that book is a very fun and quick read, it really offers nothing new. It promises a radical critique of psychoanalysis, but instead reproduces familiar objections in an exaggerated form. It mistakes the abuse of psychoanalysis outside the clinic for psychoanalysis itself — which Maybe is the most important insight it nonetheless produces for Freudians — , offers almost no positive alternative, and therefore ultimately remains as reductive as what it criticizes.
All the critiques that are formulated are the standard arguments, sadly explored very surface-level here:
1. you got the argument that psychoanalysis has a normalizing function, that marks sickness and deviancy as not normal and is there to make you „normal“ again.
2. Or you also have the critique that psychoanalysis is patriarchal, based on heteronormativity,
3. and also you have the common critique that is prominent even outside of theory circles that psychoanalysis only looks for causes, but this looking for causes in the end traps you in the cause.
4. Also it is a reductive kind of discourse that reduces everything to the Oedipal triad, which is in essence just the patriarchal family.
5. And there is also the next critique point, that this very patriarchal family is in essence universal and unchangeable.
These very common critiques of psychoanalysis are multiplied to the max by the author with frankly very absurd statements, like that the entire oeuvre of Lacan is just an attempt to mark and differentiate homosexuality from heterosexuality, and homosexuality as sickness, and treating sexual difference as unchangeable or the potential change of sexual difference as something that is destructive to society. And I think it will be very easy to debunk these claims, especially when we're talking about Lacan … some of these claims certainly.
I wanted to read this book because I feel like there is some grain of truth in these criticisms, which isn't well executed or well explored here, but nonetheless these are things that I feel like are critical about psychoanalysis, for example. Yes, sexual difference is essential to psychoanalysis. You can't get rid of sexual difference. And also the structure is always something that is like father, mother, child, and maybe also the hierarchy between the different clinical structures of psychosis, perversion, and neurosis suggest a normality or teleology. All these are issues I wonder about and wonder what to do with it. There’s where I was looking for answers here.
But, especially in regards to Lacan, I don't feel like they are very helpfully addressed in this work because hier critiques are made very reductive. I felt like it was a very similar kind of critique to early, very vulgar materialism, for example, in regards to religion.
For example, in famous American labor movement songs from back in the day, where religion is nothing more than a kind of ideological program to make you obedient, make you happy with your life because you will get your reward after death And for example, religion teaches you to be obedient to your boss just like to God. And these critiques are necessary. Yes, religion served that purpose. On the other hand, it's also highly reductive. There's much more going on.
In liberation theology, we can see that the whole discourse of religion can be utilized in different ways, especially with Christianity, or also Islam has that possibility. These approaches analyse and read the discourse of religion in a liberatory way, without betraying it or completely getting rid of it, which is an approach that the author aggressively criticizes. He wants to get rid of it completely. This is not something like a Hegelian Aufhebung. It is just normal negation, which as we know will always do the opposite of its intention.
And this I feel is a big problem. Not only that his critique of psychoanalysis is not very good. And you have this very aggressive language, like calling this terrorism or violence. Which, yes, maybe in some regard, but you can't just throw it completely out of the window without answering what psychoanalysis is, how it developed, with what aim? They are completely ignoring the most famous insights of psychoanalysis which are very much against the patriarchal dogma of the time. Especially, it's in many ways very progressive.
For example, a very famous quote from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, where Freud says homosexuality is just as much in question as heterosexuality, that homosexuality is in need of explanation. In a way to say, there's no difference, there are no naturalities about heterosexuality in this regard. All these forms have to be explained in the same way. All have to be questioned.
And I can very much sympathize with this, especially him being from France, because it is true that in France, psychoanalysis, especially with people like Jacques-Alain Miller, is very much conservative.
It can be very conservative. And it can have that very arrogant function of looking down on other people, at other theories, and completely shaming them with arrogance, but this book, to be honest, is not doing anything other than that, just in the other direction. So I can understand his anger because yes, there's a long tradition in France of socially very conservative psychoanalysis.
But nonetheless, it would be wrong to just throw psychoanalysis out completely just because of that. Because you can find much more in it. And in that sense, maybe it can be a trap. You can be trapped because there's so much to discover. So much to read in it, do something with it. So it can be trapping, and I can understand that this author felt trapped and wanted to escape, especially in a country that is very, very, very much influenced by psychoanalytic discourse in their culture.
But it is his choice to let psychoanalysis appear and be read as these conservatives do, he capitulates before them and instead takes the stance of a rebel. There is the possibility of a liberatory reading of psychoanalysis. The author chooses to accept the conservative reading. It’s his choice to do so.
To claim that psychoanalysis, for example, has the function to mark the pathological as pathological and create normality, is absurd. Lacan, especially, is very clear about that this is not the goal of psychoanalysis. The goal of psychoanalysis is to, in practice, give you a savoir-faire, a way to deal with your pathology.
It doesn't heal you. On the other hand, also the quote-unquote normal position of subjectivity in and of itself is already pathological. Because it is split, because it has an ontogenesis. Ontogenesis is something that this author feels is critical because he feels like by investigating the ontogenesis of the subject, you in essence reduce the subject to this ontogenesis, to the cause of what's going on.
That is one of the standard critiques I formulated above, that psychoanalysis is very focused on explaining origins. This is, I think, maybe one of the things that this author is angry about the most. Because he feels like psychoanalysis looks for causes.
And by finding causes it reduces the things that the individual subject is doing through these causes. So psychoanalysis says, this and that happened in your childhood and this is the true meaning of what you're doing.
And I feel like this not wanting to look into causes because it feels like causes are reductive, and are trapping, is a trap in itself because I think this is very much a liberal framework, instead of a radical framework, because radical in essence means the root of something.
So the question of Marxism and the question of Freudianism, which are two things that are criticized by this author, is to look into the roots, to the reasons, to the causes of things. And of course it's kind of annoying that there are two sides in continental philosophy: the ones that hate psychoanalysis and the other that think psychoanalysis is the ultimate thing. Both of these sides, of course, like denouncing the other side as not being radical or being critically lacking.
But I think, going to the etymology of radical, the root, it's very wrong to just want to get rid of looking for causes. he argues for affect without understanding or explanation.
And that's the central problem that this author kind of ignores, just as he ignores a lot of other things in the history of psychoanalysis. And it's very much maybe the problem of this philosopher because he falls for this kind of applied psychoanalysis, for this wild and applied psychoanalysis. But it is also the issue of French authors like Jacques-Alain Miller, who do apply psychoanalysis to culture.
And that is the main issue, but what I was most sad about was that this book, as the first pages indicate, is very much a negative theology of love, right? It just doesn't really articulate that much about a positive theory. And I think the best chapter was the chapter on Roland Barthes' Fragments of a Lover's Discourse, which tried to indicate a positive kind of discourse about love, which again had the issue of ignoring causes, but that's fine.
And I think the last few pages about Foucault were very weird because in the chapter about Roland it indicated that he is very much in defense of romantic love against the kind of weird cynical sexual liberation of the '68 movement. But then when you read the few lines on Foucault's positive theory of how we should look at the psyche... I mean, that's even more than psychoanalysis's reduction to causes, because there are no causes except the discourse of power, which is a disciplinary discourse, so everything you do or the love you might feel, or the soul searching you do... well, it's all the discourse of power, so don't invest too much time in it. Which is just even more cynical, I feel like. Where are the pure affects of love he spoke of before in that?
Even though psychoanalysis looks at causes, I feel like psychoanalysis is never reductive to these causes. If we now for a moment ignore that it actually can only be correct if it is effective in the clinic... I feel like psychoanalysis is never reductive. And if you view it as reductive, well, you're getting it wrong. Because yes, a cause and origin isn't the truth.
It is psychoanalysis, especially with the Oedipus complex, the Name-of-the-Father, all this stuff. It articulates something like what Kant articulates about the transcendental aesthetic. It's the condition of possibility for your specific cognition of the world, for your reality as the interaction between the imaginary and the symbolic.
And in essence also for true romantic love. I don't think that true romantic love is impossible for psychoanalysis. It is very much possible. The only thing is its condition of possibility is the Oedipus complex, is the Name-of-the-Father, all that stuff. It's a condition of possibility, but from this condition of possibility arises something qualitatively different. And I feel like this author completely ignores that.
And also you could criticize these different diagnoses as hierarchical. On the top you have hysteria and neurosis, on the bottom your psychoses. And in some parts Lacan very much agreed with that, but in essence, all these diagnoses are just different modes that take part in the thing that is at the root of this ontogenesis of the subject. They meet the cause, the Name-of-the-Father and all. So they all take part in that just in different modes, and I feel like that's very much articulated in the late seminars by Lacan.
So to finish up. It was a fun read, it was entertaining, but it was infuriating because it had no positive theory and the critique of psychoanalysis was very, very reductive. And I feel like I've got to find a solution on where to get a positive theory of something like the ontogenesis of the subject. And maybe a critique of psychoanalysis that isn't so happy about completely getting rid of the causes. Guess I godda read the whole canon to then finally crack D&G open.
July 6, 2020
En lo personal implicó saber que había voces importantes en contra del psicoanálisis. Aquella propuesta de Freud comenzó como una ciencia y terminó siendo una ideología, si acaso, una filosofía. A Eribon lo invitan hablar del amor y para ello buscará a Roland Barthes. Procurando permitirse una antifilosofía.
El amor es inmanencia el amor es multiplicidad.
Como muestra de la potencia de sus conferencias:
"¡Un imaginario liberado de la férula de lo simbólico! Eso es lo que pone en peligro todo el edificio normativo del psicoanálisis lo imaginario se desahoga, es pura creación, sólo está unido a sí mismo."
El amor es inmanencia el amor es multiplicidad.
Como muestra de la potencia de sus conferencias:
"¡Un imaginario liberado de la férula de lo simbólico! Eso es lo que pone en peligro todo el edificio normativo del psicoanálisis lo imaginario se desahoga, es pura creación, sólo está unido a sí mismo."
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