Resistances of psychoanalysis

the long version

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 psychoanalysis's resistance to itself, an insusceptibility to analysis that has to do with the structure of analysis itself. These essays serve to clarify Derrida's 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.