Anne Paschetta

19세기 말, 이탈리아 산 속 우게테라 마을에 소수의 주민들이 모여 살고 있다. 그들에게는 거센 추위와 전쟁의 여파, 사상과 이념의 문제 혹은 그 어떤 다른 것도 입에 풀칠하는 것보다 중한 일이 아니었다.

45,000 patients died in French psychiatric hospitals between 1939 and 1945. A single site escaped this carnage: the asylum in Saint-Alban, an isolated village in Lozère. What happened there for it to be an exception? Retracing several decades in the history of this important site of psychiatry, using precious archival films and the accounts of those who worked there, Martine Deyres answers this question and, in doing so, shows how the political courage and poetic audacity that were practised there contributed to changing medicine and society’s perception on madness. Intersecting in the crucible of this movement called “institutional psychotherapy” were members of the Resistance, artists, doctors and philosophers—including Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara and Georges Canguilhem.