Le retour aux sources. Points de vue sur l’histoire sociale de la psychiatrie et de la maladie mentale

Abstract

ObjectivesThis article describes the work of a researcher in history. Its purpose is to describe certain manners of envisaging the history of psychiatry as a social history of healthcare sciences and practices. MethodThe history of schizophrenia is used to show how it is possible to move on from the history of clinical practice to a social history of the patients concerned, making use in particular of the vast body of archives provided by patient files. ResultsThe article comprises several parts providing methodological proposals for a social history of psychiatry. The starting point is a broad perusal of the archives enabling the identification of little-known facts. The aims are as follows: to construct a “polyphonic” history of the psychiatric institution, to integrate the memory issues that pervade the medical professions, to propose a change of scale and a change of viewpoint on the history of clinical practice by highlighting its iatrogenic effects, and to make use of delusional writings and what Michel de Certeau has called “revenance” in admission interviews, the overall aim being to produce sources for a history of day-to-day psychiatry. DiscussionThe author distances himself from two theoretical positions: the anti-psychiatric approach, which has led to widespread criticism concerning existence of schizophrenia, and the “naturalist” approach, which tends to objectify scientific categories, and reserves the constructionist approach for ephemeral psychiatric pathologies. Equally distanced from these two types of approach, there is and intermediate approach aiming to construct a social history of clinical practice, using the different clinical categories and their implications for patients’ lives. ConclusionsSchizophrenia, whatever its status in the field of psychiatric knowledge, should not be omitted from the history of mental illness. Using the vast corpus of archives, and implementing the methods of social history centered on the patients, a different history of the advent and diffusion of schizophrenia can be written.