Abstract

My current project examines how radically alternative clinical practices conceive healing as an intervention on the environment (milieu and Umwelt) rather than on the subject. The starting point of this project is the critical perspective of Fernand Deligny’s thinking and practice with young maladjusted adolescents and children with severe autism, as well as his relation to Antipsychiatry, ethology and cartographic practices. The prevailing paradigm of inclusion, the basis of contemporary social and medical institutions, masks a violent form of normalization which considers “abnormal” subjects as “human capital” that should be turned into efficient workers. In opposition to this paradigm, radical psychiatry considers social and clinical work as the creation of a favorable environment where “cases” may evolve. Following the steps of Henri Wallon and in resonance with Georges Canguilhem and Jacques Lacan, Deligny explores what could be the favorable conditions so that autistic children can exercise their own normativity.