L'acte clinique en soins palliatifs au regard de l'intime et du seuil de la pudeur

Our civilization is marked by transparency issues that affect clinical practice, particularly in the field of palliative care. Medicalisation and psychologizing of death lead to an externalisation of the patient's body under the expert's eye, as well as a proposal made to the patient to talk about their death. As their life slips away, sometimes the patients are expected to reveal their very privacy. What about decency then? Our intent is to clarify the issues of the psychologist's clinical act in palliative care with regard to privacy and the threshold of decency. The psychoanalytical doctrine casts new light on these notions concerning their ontological scope, their use, as well as the particular conditions for the sense of decency to appear. Hence an ethical orientation relating to the psychologist's act: as it is used to conceal reality, decency can be essential to produce; as the subject's area, privacy requires darkness and opacity. Using a specific clinical case, this text also shows that the psychologist's act cannot be reduced to letting the patient talk but instead relies on bodily presence, the reality of the clinician's body.