Issue #25

Abstract: In this article, based on Michel Foucault lectures at the Collège de France known as “Abnormal”, we shall analyse the process of emergence, in psychiatric thought and practice, of the theme of “pleasure”. This concept is the logical continuation of the theme of “instinct”, whose development was investigated in the previous part of our research. In particular, we shall show how – while the figure of the “abnormal” replaces the figure of the “mad” – the usual forms of behaviour become the focus of psychiatry. Those forms are in fact strictly bound to sexuality, and particularly to “sexual abnormality”, approached primarily through the theme of “pleasure” unrelated to reproduction. The theme of the “inclusive modality” of power, hereby introduced, will be examined in a further article.