« Imaginaire et sensibilités » : la mise en récit de la déshospitalisation psychiatrique en Ontario.

Abstract

This paper proposes a historiographical discussion based on the article « Les contrecoups de la déshospitalisation psychiatrique. L'exemple du parcours transinstitutionel de Françoise ». Françoise's transinstitutional journey presented in the collective publication La fin de l'asile ? Histoire de la déshospitalisation psychiatrique dans l'espace francophone au XXe siècle, gives me the opportunity to reveal the subtext of this article, and to describe the method and the historical reasoning that gave life to the psychiatric journey of an anonymous person named Françoise. This process is organized around three main points: my positioning as a researcher, the issues related to my narrative approach, and a statement on my historical reasoning in an interdisciplinary perspective. Influenced and inspired by the work of Alain Corbin, George Duby, Roy Porter, Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge, my approach focusses on the feelings and emotions hidden in historical sources. I remain connected to a subjective intuition, and stay away from positivist reflexes. Based on my research experience with psychiatric records, my conclusion explores the renewal of historical writing , in which I suggest that it is possible to write the history of ordinary people while telling stories with sensitivity.