‘Research has become the scientific and practical raison d’être of psychology, the social and historical raison d’être of the psychologist. From the moment you become a psychologist, you research. What? What other researchers allow you to research, because you don’t (re)search in order to find, but to research, in order to have researched, to be a researcher. Go ahead and conduct research, research in general, research on the man in the street, on the neuroses of rats, on the statistical frequency of vowels in the English version of the Bible, on the sexual practices of the provincial woman (exclusively in the lower middle class), on the cutaneous resistance, blood pressure and respiratory rates of those listening to the Symphony of Psalms.‘
Michel Foucault, (1994) [1957] ‘La recherche scientifique et la psychologie’. In Dits et Ecrits vol. I. Paris: Gallimard, p. 156. [This passage translated by Clare O’Farrell]
Foucault News 