Psychotherapy and Materialism

Institutional psychotherapy emerged in France during World War II as a resistance movement against the fascist extermination of patients with mental and physical disabilities. The movement was initiated at the Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital and established a horizontal collective of patients and healthcare workers to dismantle confinement systems reminiscent of colonial and totalitarian practices. Embracing group therapies and patient-run cooperatives, these methods intertwined the 'treatment of the institution' and mental 'disalienation'. The book Psychotherapy and Materialism offers the first English translation of two seminal texts by institutional psychotherapy co-inventors François Tosquelles, a Catalan psychiatrist and anarcho-syndicalist, and Jean Oury, founder of the La Borde clinic. Their materialist and 'disalienationist' approach was further developed in Frantz Fanon's decolonial psychiatry and Félix Guattari's schizoanalysis. It led to a radical rethinking of psychoanalysis, education, and social work promoted by figures like Gisela Pankow, Anne Querrien, and Ginette Michaud.