Feeling at Home in the Clinic: Therapeutic Dwelling in an Addiction Rehabilitation Center in Tehran, Iran

Abstract

AbstractThis article describes community life in a free residential rehabilitation center for women in Tehran, Iran. In a social context that stigmatizes drug use, especially by women, this rehabilitation center provides poor and homeless drug users a much‐needed opportunity to engage in recovery. I argue that the treatment team's emphasis on “therapeutic dwelling” had significant ramifications on the rehabilitation outcomes of their patients. I use the term “therapeutic dwelling” to refer to a patient's ability to form mutual relations of care and concern with others in therapeutic settings. A therapeutic culture that emphasizes dwelling can have multiple effects on the healing trajectories of patients. It can create a supportive community that extends the rehabilitation process while also further marginalizing patients who are unable to properly exhibit care toward others. Ultimately, this article highlights that dwelling should be approached as a malleable—rather than a purely positive—form of sociality that has the power to both exclude and welcome, to provide and withhold personal connection and intimacy