Energy, sleep, and anguish in Michel Henry’s psychoanalytic approach

Abstract

This article seeks to reveal both the strength of Michel Henry’s psychoanalytical approach and the difficulties it encounters. Against the «unconscious of representation» of classical phenomenology, based on a «dialectics between drive and representation», Henry advocates an «unconscious of life» that interprets drive as «self-affection», regardless of any representational content. This study turns first to the pre-hermeneutical energetics of Freud’s 1895 Project and then to the analysis of the «means of figuration» in The interpretation of dreams. Finally, through the concept of anguish, it draws attention to a central difficulty of the Henryan approach: the division between life and the living.