Healing Institutions
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A landmark anthology of Francesc Tosquelles's intellectual, clinical, and political writings, many available in English translation for the first time.
Often consigned to legend, the life of Francesc Tosquelles reads as an adventure story of clinical, political, and collective experimentation around healing institutions. Joining the Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole psychiatric hospital in Nazi-occupied France, Tosquelles invented what would become "institutional psychotherapy" with poets, film critics, photographers, and psychiatrists including Jean Oury, Agnès Masson, Frantz Fanon, Tristan Tzara, and Paul Éluard.
This first anthology of Tosquelles's writings shines a light on his forgotten history, from his engagement as a psychiatrist during the Spanish Civil War alongside anti-Franquist and anti-Stalinist communists, to his progressive return to Catalonia following his role in the "cultural revolution" of "institutional psychotherapy" in France. Through translations of texts never before available in English, Tosquelles's powerful voice reminds us how important politicized relations to institutions are in our times of sick institutions, scapegoating of strangers, and globalized war.
About this Author
Francesc Tosquelles (1912-1994) was an avant-garde psychiatrist. Born in Catalonia, he fled to exile in Southern France during the Spanish Civil War. From 1940 to 1962, Tosquelles worked at the Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole psychiatric hospital in Lozère, where he pioneered the revolutionary, nonhierarchical practices of "institutional psychotherapy." In 2021-24, Tosquelles's work was the subject of a touring retrospective exhibition at the Abattoirs, Musée-Frac Occitanie Toulouse; the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB); the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), New York.
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