Synopses & Reviews
In the three essays that make up this stimulating and often startling book, Jacques Derrida argues against the notion that the basic ideas of psychoanalysis have been thoroughly worked through, argued, and assimilated. The continuing interest in psychoanalysis is here examined in the various “resistances” to analysis—conceived not only as a phenomenon theorized at the heart of psychoanalysis, but as psychoanalysiss resistance to itself, an insusceptibility to analysis that has to do with the structure of analysis itself.
Derrida not only shows how the interest of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic writing can be renewed today, but these essays afford him the opportunity to revisit and reassess a subject he first confronted (in an essay on Freud) in 1966. They also serve to clarify Derridas thinking about the subjects of the essays—Freud, Lacan, and Foucault—a thinking that, especially with regard to the last two, has been greatly distorted and misunderstood.
The first essay, on Freud, is a tour de force of close reading of Freuds texts as philosophical reflection. By means of the fine distinctions Derrida makes in this analytical reading, particularly of The Interpretation of Dreams, he opens up the realm of analysis into new and unpredictable forms—such as meeting with an interdiction (when taking an analysis further is “forbidden” by a structural limit).
Following the essay that might be dubbed Derridas “return to Freud,” the next is devoted to Lacan, the figure for whom that phrase was something of a slogan. In this essay and the next, on Foucault, Derrida reencounters two thinkers to whom he had earlier devoted important essays, which precipitated stormy discussions and numerous divisions within the intellectual milieus influenced by their writings. In this essay, which skillfully integrates the concept of resistance into larger questions, Derrida asks in effect: What is the origin and nature of the text that constitutes Lacanian psychoanalysis, considering its existence as an archive, as teachings, as seminars, transcripts, quotations, etc.?
Derridas third essay may be called not simply a criticism but an appreciation of Foucaults work: an appreciation not only in the psychological and rhetorical sense, but also in the sense that it elevates Foucaults thought by giving back to it ranges and nuances lost through its reduction by his readers, his own texts, and its formulaic packaging.
Synopsis
In three interlinked essays, focusing on the writings of Freud, Lacan and Foucault, Derrida examines some of the basic assumptions underlying psychoanalysis. He examines the way in which certain subjects resist analysis, arguing that in many cases the way in which analysis is structured and performed makes resistance inevitable. He offers close readings and appreciation of the works of all three figures, examining writings like Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, and questions the nature of the texts that constitute analysis. As well as offering an important reflection of their subject for students and practitioners of psychology, the text-based analysis of Resistances of Psychoanalysis also marks another major contribution by Derrida to the fields of philosophy and critical and literary theory.
Synopsis
In this stimulating and often startling book, Derrida examines the various "resistances" to analysisconceived not only as a phenomenon theorized at the heart of psychoanalysis, but as psychoanalysis's resistance to itself. The book comprises three essays devoted to Freud, Lacan, and Foucault.
About the Author
Peggy Kamuf is the Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. She has written, edited, or translated many books, by Derrida and others, and is coeditor of the series of Derrida’s seminars at the University of Chicago Press.