Le clown sympathique-empathique en USP pour adultes : une alliance thérapeutique dans la joie

What is Anabelle the clown doing in a palliative care unit? For some, she's condescending, treating the seriously ill adult like a child, for others she lacks respect for the suffering. But in real life, it happens the other way around, using the imaginary as a therapeutic tool brings heartfelt joy. Anabelle the clown is a luminous character with a long tradition of clowning and art-therapy who can help enlighten the dying person's last moments of life. Through her sensitive, luminous, uncanny way of looking at the outside world, Anabelle enables patients enduring a palliative situation to live their strong emotions differently. She lets them activate their imagination. With her less than serious attitude, she can use light disconnected metaphors to talk about dying in the face of death. In cooperation with the caregivers, she becomes a catalyst allowing intimate and surprising discourse which otherwise might not have taken place. Support when approaching death can sometimes offer the occasion for a spiritual opening to a lighter dimension. And what if meeting the “marvelous-joyful” were the ultimate door to reassuring life on the doorstep of death? An audacious alliance with the patient.