Les troubles psychiques dans le monde religieux

This article devoted to the difficult management of psychic suffering in religious institutions is part of a larger corpus of thought concerning bodily and symbolic violence in Catholic religious communities. My field of anthropological analysis is based on a long-term investigation (1997-2003) where participative observation, qualitative interviews, and apostolic testimonials enabled me to apprehend not only overt and hidden affects, but also chronic suffering within this particular setting so inclined to discretion. This approach borrows its field of analysis from hermeneutics where interview contents are exploited in the light of rare psychiatric medical texts, autobiographies of former priests and normalizing Church texts in order to present this “life of suffering” not as a marginal phenomenon, but as one affecting a large number of individuals.