Où sont les fous ? Aperçus critiques sur le paradigme de la « santé mentale »

In the present article, “mental health” is addressed, not as a psychiatric or sociological concept, but as a paradigm that structures a wide range of discourses and practices, ideals and policies, institutions and professions. We chose to follow two lines of research, aiming at: (1) defining the contours of this new paradigm, studying a few distinctive features from the psychiatric and judiciary model inherited from the French Revolution; (2) shedding light on the genealogy of its emergence in the psychiatric and psychoanalytical discourse, be it through the internationalisation of the nosography derived from the DSM, the influence of the anti-psychiatry and institutional psychotherapy movements, or the development of work-related psychopathology and psycho-dynamics. We conclude on the specifically political dimension of this paradigm, eclipsed by processes of idealisation and subjection measures that are not recognised as such, and harnessed by a denial of reality (namely, the reality of castration) that precludes reflecting on (and thus putting into perspective) “mental health” and both the discourses and practices it commands.