Discussion with Elena Vogman & Marlon Miguel discussing the work of François Tosquelles and Jean Oury 

Born amidst the ruins of World War II and the shadow of fascist extermination policies, institutional psychotherapy emerged not just as a form of mental health care, but as a radical mode of resistance. At the Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital in occupied France, a new approach was forged, one that tore open the walls of confinement and reimagined the psychiatric institution as a space for collective transformation. Patients and caregivers, militants and medics worked together in horizontal structures, creating group therapies and cooperatives that refused both the authoritarianism of the clinic and the colonial logic embedded in psychiatric norms.

The recent volume Psychotherapy and Materialism brings this history into sharper view, offering the first English translations of two key texts by François Tosquelles and Jean Oury – figures at the core of this movement. A Catalan exile and anarcho-syndicalist, Tosquelles was instrumental in theorizing the treatment of the institution as inseparable from the treatment of psychic suffering. Oury, later founder of the La Borde clinic, extended this work through experimental practices that would resonate with – and influence – thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, Fernand Deligny, and Anne Querrien. 

Rather than containing madness, institutional psychotherapy opened a space for its circulation, listening, and expression – what we might call a politics of disalienation. It unsettles not only psychiatry but also psychoanalysis, pedagogy, and social practice. As these ideas echo into today’s crises of care and mental health, this discussion invites us to think with Tosquelles and Oury: what would it mean to treat our institutions – and ourselves – otherwise?

Bios: Elena Vogman is a scholar of comparative literature and media. She is Freigeist Fellow and Principal Investigator of the research project co-principal investigator of the research project ‘Madness, Media, Milieus: Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe’ at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and visiting fellow at the ICI Berlin. She is the author of two books, Sinnliches Denken. Eisensteins exzentrische Methode (2018) and Dance of Values: Sergei Eisenstein’s Capital Project (2019).

Marlon Miguel is co-principal investigator of the project ‘Madness, Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe’ at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and visiting fellow at the ICI Berlin. He holds a double PhD in Fine Arts (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) and Philosophy (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). His current research focuses on the intersection between contemporary philosophy, art, media, and psychiatry. He also practices contemporary circus and does practical movement research. 

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