QUELLE POLITIQUE POUR LA FOLIE ?
What this book tries to conceive is a new space offering hospitality to madness, taking as its starting point what the author - a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst - set up within the very hospital he directs, and working alongside patients undergoing treatment. This book’s enduring idea is that, if a policy is adopted at local government level, we can avoid the current threat to psychiatry: dehumanization, performance-related pressures and exploitation of our fears.
This question is addressed, above and beyond patricians, to society as a whole and to the world of politics, because psychoanalysts’ responsibility is still a determining factor on condition that they do not relinquish their efforts to show much needed solidarity, nor abandon this space within the treatment facility that is their own. They can therefore request new directions in patient care and avoid the systematic use of medication or isolation that are all too frequently suggested for the mentally ill, and they can include an anthropological dimension in suggested policies. Now more than ever, psychoanalysis is an antidote, a means of resistance but also a vehicle for suggesting and robustly initiating another approach to madness and to human suffering. Despite or as well as a degree of suspense.
Guy Dana, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was born in Egypt in 1948. After studying medicine and philosophy, he moved into psychiatry. He was trained by Lacan and, in 1991, was appointed as consultant to a general psychiatric unit. From 1997 to 2000 he was Chairman of the Cercle Freudien; he was a co-founder of the global Convergencia association, and in 2003 he organized the Forum for Middle Eastern Psychoanalysts in the French Government’s “Sénat” . Having written numerous articles and contributed to collective works, this is his first book. Since 2009 he has been a member of the “group des 39”, and strives to re-orient psychiatry to be more compatible with human sciences and psychoanalysis.
C’est un nouvel espace d’hospitalité à la folie que ce livre tente de penser à partir de ce que l’auteur, psychiatre et psychanalyste, a pu créer au sein même de l’hôpital qu’il dirige et dans les cures auprès des malades. L’idée tenace de ce livre est qu’une politique qui s’installe au coeur de la ville peut permettre de contourner la menace qui pèse actuellement sur la psychiatrie : déshumanisation, exigence de rendement et instrumentalisation de nos peurs.
Cette question s’adresse, au-delà des praticiens, à la société tout entière et au monde politique, car la responsabilité des psychanalystes reste déterminante à condition de ne pas renoncer à faire preuve d’une solidarité indispensable ni d’abandonner cet espace de la cure qui est le leur. Ainsi peuvent-ils susciter des orientations dans le soin des malades en évitant la prise systématique de médicaments ou l’isolement des aliénés trop souvent proposé, en incluant une dimension anthropologique dans les politiques proposées.
La psychanalyse est aujourd’hui plus que jamais un antidote qui permet de résister mais aussi de proposer et d’initier de façon rigoureuse une autre approche de la folie et de la souffrance humaine. Malgré, ou avec, un certain suspense.
