Freud’s Receptions in French Philosophy (1913–2000)

Abstract This article examines how psychoanalysis became a metaphysical question in French philosophy between 1913 and 2000. The philosophical issue is to solve the problem of the Subject. How could a subject of existence become an object of knowledge? Is Freud breaking with this reduction of the Subject to an object? Or does he merely exemplify it? In this debate, an epistemological judgment quickly emerges: describing unconscious facts is valuable, but bad metaphysics distorted interpretations. Three philosophical objectives follow: (i) to criticize a scientific psychology, (ii) to underpin the cure, (iii) to locate Freud’s philosophical place. In conclusion, psychoanalysis reveals a French philosophical tradition trying to eliminate abstract Cartesian metaphysics, thanks to the renewal of a concrete ontology of the Subject.