L’Antipsychiatrie, symptôme de la postmodernité ?

Abstract

BackgroundCurrent practices that deal with mental suffering are tinged with liberal discourses; as is seen by the striking publication of the DSM V (2013). If the manual's launch in the international scene caused considerable outcry a few years ago, the DSM III (1980), its forefather marked a new trend in psychiatry that replaced the hitherto paramount paradigm of “psychopathological structures” (1926–1977). MethodFocusing our article on the concept of metanoia together with the testimony of the antipsychiatry muse, Mary Barnes, we propose an analysis of the enigmatic filiation between two different discourses: the antipsychiatry discourse and that of mental health. ResultsAlthough this movement appears in a wave of multifocal contestations that characterizes the sixties and the seventies, an era filled by counter-cultural trends, it also stems from the meetings between a few tormented souls and intellectuals pursuing a gateway through the context of a modern society perceived as alienating. It's also from a social angle that one can analyze a part of postmodernity, through the expressions of madness that affect shifting subjects destined for unlimited, in essence devastating, enjoyment… DiscussionIn Kingsley Hall, Laing conceptualizes and experiments various ways to break loose from normality, the only real alienation. Beyond its clinical intent, this antipsychiatric discourse achieves its peak by conceding knowledge to the madman, the only one who is mentally sane. The madman would be the model one could reach thanks to the metanoia, a trip that would permit the one who experiences it to find his/her true self. The antipsychiatry discourse can be understood as a symptom, an early-warning message announcing the contemporary model of mental health: new psychiatric classifications and discursive changes impacting psychopathological expressions. ConclusionAntipsychiatry and mental health discourses seem to share an aim of improving the person by taking him/her back to his/her genuine self. By following this project, the person could have been released from social alienation in the sixties and today, from mental disorders. So if some antipsychiatric avatars pad postmodernity, what are the remaining alternatives between “ordinary madness” and a health project focused on an always more perfectible individual?