« La transformation, c’est l’inopiné de l’objet ». Une rencontre avec Vassilis Kapsambelis

Abstract

ObjectiveThis interview seeks to reflect on the current challenges of training clinicians in a context marked by significant changes in the field of psychiatry. Vassilis Kapsambelis, who has been a teacher for many years (as a theoretician, a clinician, and as an editor) and who has a dual status of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, gives a lively and authentic accounting of his experience. MethodIn an open conversation with three interlocutors, Vassilis Kapsambelis is asked about his own career, which began in Greece in the late 1970s and continued in France. The analysis of the social and political context of psychiatry over the last forty years is largely evoked. ResultsThis story evokes the personal encounters (colleagues, teachers, and patients) that made a difference, as well as the inspiration of political commitment. Several pivotal periods in the history of contemporary psychiatry are discussed: the reform of psychiatry in the immediate aftermath of the war, the separation of neurology and psychiatry in 1968, the reform of the specialty internship in 1984. DiscussionThe history of psychiatry shows that its course is far from linear. Certain periods can be described as exceptional as they produce profound upheavals of the discipline. This was the case in the years following the Second World War, but this is no longer the case today. It is a “normal” period in the sense that it produces little innovation in clinical work. It is necessary to be able to be inspired by it without living in a sterile nostalgia. ConclusionsEach formation is singular and any subjective transformation is due to the unexpected nature of the object. Clinical training alone cannot engender the commitment and interest that often exist in the would-be clinician, and that can be informed by her or his personal psychoanalysis.