Pour une épistémologie « par le bas ». Quelques remarques sur l'article de P.-H. Castel, « Psychanalyse et épistémologie : comment s'extraire de l'impasse ? »

Taking note of the text to be debated, our commentary proposes to restore the different argumentative high points, then to discuss the contributions and the limits. The interest of this article seems to us to lie in the overview it offers on questions relating to psychoanalytic epistemology, in its concern for openness to other disciplines and in its research proposal announced as innovative: that of a resituation of psychoanalysis in the more general field of socio-anthropology. The points that have to be discussed are: the author's mobilization of contradictory enunciative dimensions; sometimes irreconcilable epistemic references; the underestimation of the clinical (medical and psychological) legacy of psychoanalysis; and consequently the strong contestability (from a practitioner point of view) of the hypothesis of a psychoanalysis that finds its intelligibility as a “reflexive ritual for modern individuals in need of autonomy”. Contrary to the choice of a “top-down” epistemology defended by this text (“standard” epistemology and anthropological perspective of the rituals used to resituate a priori clinical practices), we propose, as a framework condition for any rise in generality, the prior exercise of a reflexivity from practices, clinical, “from below”.