Leave Us Our Charlatans!

Leave Us Our Charlatans!

by Marcela Iacub and Patrice Maniglier

Le Monde, 2 December 2003

We who are engaged in a psychotherapy or a psychoanalysis, have been, or may be, ask the “health authorities” to be so good as to stop protecting us from charlatans. Indeed, not yet being under guardianship, we think ourselves capable of choosing, at our own risk, our psychoanalysts or our psychotherapists, and those of our children. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the “Accoyer amendment”, which claims, on the pretext of protecting us from ourselves and from our unconscious demons, to impose on our therapists, who have sometimes been in practice for several years, the training of a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

We oppose the legislator thus reducing our psychic suffering to an illness, and assimilating our psychotherapies to a more or less expeditious medico-psychological treatment, without moreover pronouncing on its reimbursement. If, today, we wish to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist, absolutely nothing prevents us. But if we go to a “psy”, it is not for our mental health - which is no worse than that, thank you -, but because we want to talk to him about our family, love, professional or social worries, or because we are looking for something about ourselves, however opaque it may be. We do not believe that a few sessions with a licensed specialist in our “symptoms” will do the job. Heartbreaks, bereavements, professional, artistic, sexual inhibitions, job losses (especially at the moment…), feelings of repetition: none of this falls under “illness”, the “health authority”, or the control of the State. We think it better that the State renounce the project of “framing” our “psychic suffering”. For that, we prefer to go and see our therapists freely.

Some of them, we are told, are said to be charlatans (people who talk a lot, in Spanish). In fact, usually, we find them rather too silent. Not to the point, however, of being unable to tell us what studies they did and what specialised training they followed, for example a psychoanalysis, for which no State diploma is possible. For the most part, they give us the impression of being in perpetual training: they spend their evenings in clinical seminars and their weekends in theoretical colloquia which they organise voluntarily in their associations, where they seem to examine and evaluate one another ceaselessly. We would like to be sure they are well analysed, but one does not see how a university diploma could attest that to us.

This law, we are also told, is supposed to aim at preventing sexual abuse. But in what way would a title of psychiatrist or psychologist keep us from succumbing to the irresistible charm of a certified “psy” who wanted to sleep with us? In what way will these diplomas, certainly respectable for other purposes, save us from the dangers of seduction? And if it is purely and simply a matter of rape, do there not exist numerous laws punishing such behaviour?

Likewise, Mr Accoyer writes: “Since February 2000, the interministerial mission for the fight against the cults has been signalling that certain psychotherapeutic techniques are a tool in the service of cultic infiltration, and it regularly recommends to the health authorities that these practices be framed. This situation constitutes a real danger for the mental health of patients and falls under public health.” There again, we do not understand: if the powerful anti-cult law has not served, for two years, to dam the infiltration of this scourge, which had, it was then said, to be carefully distinguished from true religion, will an additional law, bearing now on psychotherapy, succeed better? We doubt it: the cult spirit looks solid, and the authorities should reflect on its causes.

On the other hand, we observe an ever more pronounced tendency to take our psychological “vulnerability” as a pretext for calling into question our capacity to act freely. We do not want a tutelary State that claims to take charge of the good of our souls. We therefore ask the question: who is profiting from our psychic suffering the better to impose their interests on us?

Marcela Iacub is a jurist and researcher at the CNRS, author of several works dealing with the relations between law and the evolution of medical practices.

Patrice Maniglier is a philosopher and teacher at the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm)

Webmaster at the International Centre for the Study of Contemporary French Philosophy, a research centre of the philosophy department of the École Normale Supérieure of the rue d’Ulm

Published works:

La culture (Ellipses, 11/2002)

Famille en scène, with Marcela Iacub (Revue Autrement, 03/2003)

Among the first co-signatories of this text-petition: Ali Benmakhlouf (philosopher), Jean and Mayotte Bollack (philologists), Roland Castro (architect), Marie Darrieussecq (writer), Jacques Henric (writer), Christophe Khim (editor-in-chief of Art Press), Michel Korinman (historian and Germanist), Catherine Malabou (philosopher), Régis Michel (chief curator at the Louvre museum), Catherine Millet (writer and director of Art Press), Catherine Perret (philosopher), Jean-Michel Rabaté (professor of literature), Léon Vandermersch (sinologist). email: noscharlatans@yahoo.fr