The Slightest Attachment

D'Hoop's book is an ethnographic study of a day-care center, based in Brussels, for teenagers with psychiatric disorders. Some years ago, the center moved from a family house, where it was founded, to a more formal building better adapted for the growing group of users. The author, who is both an anthropologist and an architect, took advantage of that event to reflect with the actors themselves on what is or could be the role of spatial arrangements in therapeutic processes.Very often the actors drew her attention to details generally marginalized in the social analysis of psychiatric institutions. For instance, the crew discussed the kitchen at some length. In the old building, the kitchen was a zone of transit between the hall and the dining room. The teenagers would often stay in the kitchen and chat with Josie, the cook. In the therapeutic process, the active participation of the teenagers was essential, and thus Josie was considered a full part of the team. Thanks to these informal talks, she had much insight to share on the well-being of the youths and their worries. She complained that the space was too confined to cook with the teenagers at her side. Josie asked to close off the kitchen of the new building from the dining area. Notwithstanding, the team understood the importance of the informal knowledge she gathered by speaking, while cooking, with the teenagers. The architects helped them find a middle ground. In the new building, the kitchen is no longer a transit zone: a bar stands between it and the dining room. It turns out that the teenagers most often eat at the bar so they can speak to Josie, who thus continues to play her role in the care process.In the last century—at least in its second half—social scientists, historians, and philosophers mainly analyzed psychiatric institutions to understand and criticize their disciplinary dimensions. Michel Foucault described how the architecture of such institutions served the aim of controlling the bodies and thoughts of patients. From that perspective, buildings were regarded as imposing some kinds of behaviors. D'Hoop wants instead to show how spatial arrangements do not always determine human behavior; they can also serve as an occasion or an invitation to initiate behaviors and stimulate new interests. The bar table, for instance, does not force the teenagers to talk to Josie the cook but offers a setting to do so if they feel like it. By paying attention to such architectural details, the author makes explicit what matters most to the actors themselves; she shows how even what may seem to outsiders the slightest of their attachments “bears important consequences for the care work [and for the] institutional life.”

Affinities · Psychiatry · Sociology · Stereochemistry · Chemistry · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

• When Multispecies Ethnography Encounters a Shelter-Based Clinic

  Open Access•Vincent Laliberté•Culture Medicine and Psychiatry•2024

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