Critique et clinique. La pratique analytique comme modèle opératoire pour l’intervention philosophique chez Althusser

Abstract

Critical and clinical: Psychoanalysis as an operative model for philosophical intervention in Althusser’s thought

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role played by the psychoanalytical model of intervention in Althusser’s reflections on the function of the philosophical practice initiated by Marx. In doing so, we will see how Althusser conceptualized Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and Marx’s critique of ideology and used these theoretical revolutions as a paradigm to understand the modalities of philosophical intervention on ideology. While the centrality of consciousness, subjectivity and knowledge will appear subordinated in both psychoanalytical and ideological processes, the primacy of structural, non-subjective and practical experience as a precondition for any critical and emancipatory theory will be highlighted.

Keywords: Althusser, Ideology, Unconscious, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Subject, Therapy, Intervention, Emancipation, Materialism