Biopolitics and Pain: Approximations between Foucault and Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Abstract The technological and scientific advances have brought, in the context of public health policies, a relentless pursuit of the notion of well-being and the elimination of pain, a feeling which was not always conceived as an evil to be eradicated. Foucault, through the concept of biopolitics, indicated that actions from the medical domain were incorporated by the State in order to control the bodies, with the support of medicalization. Starting from a psychoanalytic approach - in which it is assumed that pain can fulfill a role for man as a speaking animal - we conclude that in cases of chronic pain, it is critical, before curing it, to understand its purpose and to seek singular solutions.