États de conscience, phénomènes psi et santé mentale

Abstract

The position of the mental health practitioner remains fundamentally uncomfortable confronted with a testimony of experienced facts which contredict or surpass our understanding of common sense. Neither scientific rationalism, institutional religion, orthodox freudian psychiatry, or orthodox behaviourism permits one to openly receive this type of experience without its being subject to excessive deformation by their analytical or reading-based framewords. Recent work in the psychology of consciousness, based on psychophysiological, neuro psychological and psychobiological approaches reconstitute the limits of ordinary consciousness and the consensual perception of sensory reality. They also identify the physiological substrata and the cognitive mechanisms which ally themselves to another, equally as valuable, apprehension of reality. According to this latter, psi phenomena become exceptional, but normal, experiences. It is a question from then on not to discredit but to recognize their place in personal experience, and to assist, if need be, their harmonization. Having said this, much remains to be done to soundly evaluate these experiences and to attempt to understand their real physical substrata. This does not negate the need for mental health professionals to have the courage not to abuse psychopathological frameworks or pharmacological treatment, and to give ourselves perspectives founded truly on human development and mental health.