Will-to-Power

This is the first chapter in what makes up Part III of the book—an existential and psychosocial interpretation of what was identified empirically in the previous chapters. The chapter engages theoretically that will-to-power was taken for granted in the accounts and at the same time power was something the participants wanted to distance themselves from. Their will-to-power was thus experienced as making them at odds with the values of society at large. In the chapter, I try to understand how will-to-power in psychiatric care may, at the same time, inform and be informed by, not only the relationship between professionals and patients, but also between colleagues, and the narrators’ sense of being out of synch with those outside the clinic. The following is an attempt to better understand whether and, if so, how the will-to-power of practitioners of coercion may relate to a power struggle within the relations that comprise what was termed “the observational system of coercion” in a previous chapter. This aim is pursued by exploring and discussing the psychosocial dynamics implicit in the “opposite careers” of patients and professionals inhabiting “a world of inequality”, but also the “struggle for recognition” by practitioners of coercion in a society that they feel out of synch with.