Psychotherapy and Materialism

<p>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 <em>Psychotherapy and Materialism</em> 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.</p>