La liberté du patient souffrant d'une maladie chronique

To be able to understand that a chronic disease does not suppress liberty, which is the aim of care and even of therapeutic education, it is necessary to consider that a disease is an event which concerns the whole organism and the whole existence. This taking into account of illness requires that we stop defining pathology as the opposite of normality and that we consider it as another normativity, as “another mode of living”. We then have to examine the obstacles which prevent a person having a pathology from affirming his or her own normativity.