List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: A Politics of Madness
1—François Tosquelles, Saint-Alban, and the Invention of
Institutional Psychotherapy
2—Frantz Fanon, the Pathologies of Freedom, and the Decolonization
of Institutional Psychotherapy
3—Félix Guattari, La Borde, and the Search for Anti-oedipal
Politics
4—Michel Foucault, Psychiatry, Antipsychiatry, and Power
Epilogue: The Hospital as a Laboratory of Political Invention
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Camille Robcis is associate professor of French and history at Columbia University. She is the author of The Law of Kinship: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and the Family in France.
“The central journey charted here is the rise and fall
of ‘institutional psychotherapy’ – a model of psychiatric
treatment developed by Francois Tosquelles, a psychiatrist who fled
from Catalonia to Vichy France... In composing this narrative arc,
Robcis feels in total command of her archival material. But what
stands out is her articulation of the mediums and agencies that
served to propel concepts in unison, while others were overshadowed
and eclipsed. As a non-specialist, I was swept along by her ability
to make clear, nuanced argument amid richly-textured
contexts. The last chapter presents a thrilling account of how
Foucault made parts of his own history disappear (though
downplaying the extent to which he was once entangled amongst Saint
Alban’s ideas-figures). Photographs and illustrations add to the
sense of ideas being made manifest in material form – through
architecture, posters, letters and artworks – as well as embodied
by doctors and patients through their densely-woven
(dis)associations... This dynamic approach marks this book out from
others that take a more detached stance on what ‘French
Theory’ is and how it can be understood – it is far more
relational, playful and in sync with the spirit of her protagonists
(and less ‘French’ too).”
*Polyphony*
"[A] brilliant new book. . . . What is perhaps most effective about
Robcis’s approach to the topic is he rdemonstration of the
importance of historical context and contingency: she is not only a
keen interpreter of difficult concepts, but also an outstanding
historian."
*Psychoanalysis and History*
"As Camille Robcis shows in her brilliant study of mid-twentieth
century radical psychiatry, some of the most incisive critiques of
the profession emerged from within its ranks during and after the
war. Men like François Tosquelles, Frantz Fanon, Felix Guattari and
Jean Oury sought to remake psychiatry in such a way as to challenge
the very hierarchies that the discipline had long supported. . . .
One of the great strengths of Robcis’ argument is her insistence
that radical psychiatry was as much about politics as the psyche—an
argument that would have appealed to radical psychotherapists
themselves."
*Social History of Medicine*
"Totally fascinating."
*New Books in Psychoanalysis*
"An intricate exploration of the political and theoretical
dimensions of institutional psychotherapy, the reform movement that
began at Saint-Alban; and of the intellectual legacies of its
adherents. These include several major 20th-century thinkers whose
well-known philosophical works, Robcis argues, owe more to their
backgrounds in psychiatry than many of their contemporary readers
may realize."
*Counterpoint*
“Robcis offers a very subtle and refined depiction of the postwar
interweaving of psychiatry and politics. She tells a fascinating
history of conceptual transfers, borrowings, and adaptations
between the two spheres. . . . This highly stimulating book will
appeal to a very large audience—and not only to historians of
psychiatry. While the spirit of the time is now more inclined
toward psychiatric ‘deinstitutionalization,’ this volume also
offers inspiring thoughts on the role of the hospital as a
‘laboratory of political invention.’”
*Isis*
“A novel contribution to the history of psychiatry and
psychotherapy . . . Disalienation is also an exciting piece of
intellectual history. It offers incisive re-readings of key
proponents of ‘French theory’ such as Felix Guattari, Frantz Fanon,
and Michel Foucault, paying attention to their often-obscured
medical lives. . . . The chapter on Foucault is nothing short of
breathtaking.”
*American Historical Review*
“Disalienation cuts a fresh and original path through the tangled
history of French theory. Readers of Robcis’s first book, The Law
of Kinship, will know her extraordinary ability to assemble new
contexts for canonical works, and this is again on full display
in Disalienation. Following the thread of institutional
psychotherapy and mobilizing a rich array of archival documents,
Robcis brings renowned thinkers into dialogue with more obscure
institutional ones and offers new readings of Fanon, Guattari, and
Foucault. The story Disalienation pursues is harrowing and bears
witness to the traumas of war, fascism, resistance, encampment, and
empire. It is, moreover, told by Robcis with great skill and
elegance, moving seamlessly between periphery and metropole,
institution and thinker. As such, Disalienation will appeal to lay
readers and specialists alike and will perhaps call to mind
classic histories of the European psyche by Carl Schorske, Jan
Goldstein, and Debora Silverman.”
*Journal of Modern History*
"Adopting an intellectual history perspective, Camille Robcis’
objective is to understand institutional psychotherapy as a
laboratory for elaborating and testing a ‘politics of madness’,
drawing together ideas from psychiatry, philosophy, and politics
between 1945 and 1975."
*Metascience*
"Fascism and collaboration with it are not just political choices:
they also demand a particular state of mind. In this study of
institutional psychotherapy in postwar France, Robcis presents us a
gripping and wide-ranging analysis of authoritarianism’s
entanglements with histories of colonialism and violence.
Configuring institutional psychotherapy as a form of political
theory, Robcis deterritorializes psychoanalysis. In the process,
she brings together the psychic and the political, the asylum and
the colony, and the mother and the motherland."
*David L. Eng, coauthor of Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation:
On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans*
"This is a superb history of how the theory and praxis of
institutional psychotherapy inflects the work of French thinkers.
Robcis reframes the intellectual history of a strain of French
theory by explaining not only the influence of institutional
therapy and antipsychiatry on the works of diverse thinkers, but
also the deep political and affective commitments that infuse and
shape them. It is an insightful account of the constellation out of
which emerged some of the most consequential ideas in
late-twentieth-century French thought. An impressive
achievement."
*Carolyn J. Dean, author of The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony
after Genocide*
"As Robcis re-creates the imaginative and practical contexts in
which a profound revolution in psychiatric care was implemented at
the nexus of antifascism, Surrealism, resistance to Nazi
occupation, and decolonial insurgency, she models a marvelously
fresh approach to intellectual history, with genuinely new takes on
such iconic figures as Fanon, Foucault, and Guattari. Disalienation
clarifies, from myriad vantages, the constant inextricability of
psychic and political processes."
*Dagmar Herzog, author of Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality,
Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe*
"Disalienation is a rich, ambitious, and sophisticated account of
the intellectual history and political implications of
institutional psychotherapy (IP)."
*H-France Review*
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