L’accueil du méconnaissable. Dispositifs de prise de parole en psychiatrie d’urgence

• Main Author: Thomas Périlleux
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Catholique de Louvain 2015-10-01
• Series: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
• Subjects: social capacities; psychiatry; democracy; participation; speech techniques
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rsa/1412

The domains of psychiatry cannot escape an investigation devoted to the incapacities of citizens. One of the particularities of psychic disorders is in fact altering the patient’s ties to his entourage, to the point of limiting his social capacities. Psychiatric hospitalization may contribute to restoring the patients’ powers to act, talk (about themselves) and speak in public ; it can also further weaken those powers. Based on an immersion of several months in an emergency psychiatry service, this text approaches techniques introduced by caregivers to invite the hospitalized to make their own voices heard on questions of collective organization. It studies the conditions and obstacles which present themselves along the way to a citizenship exercized on the level of daily routine. Among them appears the need to make room for the unrecognizable at the heart of the social and political bond. Thus experience in psychiatry teaches us about one of the fundamental requirements of hospitality in approaches to democratic participation.