[Minorcompositions] Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 39 From Disalienation to Collective Care. Institutional Psychotherapy as Resistance

[Minor Compositions]

*Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 39 From Disalienation to Collective 
Care. Institutional Psychotherapy as Resistance 
<https://youtu.be/amhMczYypDE>*



/Discussion with Elena Vogman & Marlon Miguel discussing the work of 
François Tosquelles and Jean Oury/

Born amidst the ruins of World War II and the shadow of fascist 
extermination policies, institutional psychotherapy emerged not just as 
a form of mental health care, but as a radical mode of resistance. At 
the Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital in occupied France, a new approach 
was forged, one that tore open the walls of confinement and reimagined 
the psychiatric institution as a space for collective transformation. 
Patients and caregivers, militants and medics worked together in 
horizontal structures, creating group therapies and cooperatives that 
refused both the authoritarianism of the clinic and the colonial logic 
embedded in psychiatric norms.

The recent volume /Psychotherapy and Materialism/ brings this history 
into sharper view, offering the first English translations of two key 
texts by François Tosquelles and Jean Oury – figures at the core of this 
movement. A Catalan exile and anarcho-syndicalist, Tosquelles was 
instrumental in theorizing the treatment of the institution as 
inseparable from the treatment of psychic suffering. Oury, later founder 
of the La Borde clinic, extended this work through experimental 
practices that would resonate with – and influence – thinkers like 
Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, Fernand Deligny, and Anne Querrien.

Rather than containing madness, institutional psychotherapy opened a 
space for its circulation, listening, and expression – what we might 
call a politics of disalienation. It unsettles not only psychiatry but 
also psychoanalysis, pedagogy, and social practice. As these ideas echo 
into today’s crises of care and mental health, this discussion invites 
us to think with Tosquelles and Oury: what would it mean to treat our 
institutions – and ourselves – otherwise?

*Bios:* Elena Vogman is a scholar of comparative literature and media. 
She is Freigeist Fellow and Principal Investigator of the research 
project co-principal investigator of the research project ‘Madness, 
Media, Milieus: Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe’ at 
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and visiting fellow at the ICI Berlin. She is 
the author of two books, /Sinnliches Denken/. /Eisensteins exzentrische 
Methode /(2018) and /Dance of Values: Sergei Eisenstein’s Capital 
Project/ (2019).

Marlon Miguel is co-principal investigator of the project ‘Madness, 
Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe’ at 
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and visiting fellow at the ICI Berlin. He 
holds a double PhD in Fine Arts (Université Paris 8 
Vincennes-Saint-Denis) and Philosophy (Federal University of Rio de 
Janeiro). His current research focuses on the intersection between 
contemporary philosophy, art, media, and psychiatry. He also practices 
contemporary circus and does practical movement research.

Also available on all the usual podcast platforms.

-- 
Minor Compositions. Publishing the unruly, the radical, and the yet-co-come.
https://www.minorcompositions.info

Linktree of all our stuff:https://linktr.ee/minorcompositions
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