science

Institutional psychotherapy

Institutional psychotherapy is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Institutional psychotherapy rather than just read about it. In short: Institutional psychotherapy (also known as institutional analysis) is a philosophical movement for psychiatry reform and an approach to group psychotherapy influenced by Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis that emerged in France during World War II. The Association of Institutional Psychotherapy was founded in November 1965.

Key takeaways

Institutional psychotherapy belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Institutional psychotherapy to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Institutional psychotherapy from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Institutional psychotherapy (also known as institutional analysis) is a philosophical movement for psychiatry reform and an approach to group psychotherapy influenced by Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis that emerged in France during World War II. The Association of Institutional Psychotherapy was founded in November 1965. Those associated with the approach include François Tosquelles, Jean Oury, Félix Guattari, Frantz Fanon, and Georges Canguilhem. Institutional psychotherapy proposed a radical restructuring of the insane asylum and the mental health clinic whereby patients would actively participate in running the facility. The approach began in a hospital in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole with Tosquelles, Fanon, and Oury, and then continued at the La Borde Clinic, which was founded by Oury and where Guattari worked until his death. Institutional psychotherapy is also practiced by Patrick Chemla at the Centre Artaud in Reims and has spread to Spain and Italy. Although similar to anti-psychiatry in its institutional critique, the founders of institutional psychotherapy were adamant about distinguishing their approach from it, claiming that anti-psychiatry failed to account for the reality of mental illness, arguing that psychosis is not merely a social construct, and were open to neuroleptics and even, at times, to electroconvulsive therapy. Guattari wrote of a "systematic failure" of many psychiatrists to understand "what was going on outside the hospital walls", leading to a tendency to psychologize social problems. According to Guattari, the goal was to "never to isolate the study of mental illness from its social and institutional context, and... to analyze institutions on the basis of interpreting the real, symbolic and imaginary effects of society upon individuals." Institutional psychotherapy and the terminology used by the psychoanalysts associated with it took on a noticeable evolution throughout the 1960s to 1980s. After Guattari began to distance himself from the concept of schizoanalysis (only one year after the 1972 publication of Anti-Oedipus), he proposed that "institutional analysis" be used instead of "institutional psychotherapy". This change in nomenclature represented Guattari's intention to direct the practice at the La Borde Clinic toward a more political direction, calling for "a political analysis of desire." Guattari offered an extensive critique of institutional psychotherapy in the beginning of Molecular Revolution (1984) and introduced the concept of "institutional analysis". Guattari referred to the interactive transference that occurred at the La Borde Clinic as "transversality", while Oury called it "transferential constellation".

See also Schizoanalysis Anti-psychiatry La Borde clinic Institutional pedagogy

References

Further reading Marlon Miguel, Elena Vogman, Psychotherapy and Materialism: Essays by François Tosquelles and Jean Oury, 2024 Félix Guattari, Psychoanalysis and Transversality: Texts and Interviews 1955-1971, 2015 Félix Guattari, The Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics, 1984 - https://machinicunconsciousmachine.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/molecularrevolutions.pdf Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, 1991 - https://monoskop.org/images/b/b6/Canguilhem_Georges_The_Normal_and_the_Pathologic_1991.pdf François Dosse, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives, 2011

External links http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/blog/robcis-interview/ Jean Oury and La Borde. Conversation with Camille Robcis. http://somatosphere.net/2014/jean-oury-and-clinique-de-la-borde-a-conversation-with-camille-robcis.html/ Susana Caló, The Grid, 2016. https://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/contribution/the-grid https://epg.pubpub.org/pub/03-institutional-therapy/release/1 Susana Caló, Can an Institution be Militant?, 2019. https://www.academia.edu/38568214/Can_an_Institution_be_Militant

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Institutional psychotherapy

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Institutional psychotherapy claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Institutional psychotherapy before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Institutional psychotherapy ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Institutional psychotherapy

In research: Institutional psychotherapy appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Institutional psychotherapy in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Institutional psychotherapy is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Institutional psychotherapy outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Institutional psychotherapy in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Institutional psychotherapy means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Institutional psychotherapy out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Institutional psychotherapy in simple terms?

Why does Institutional psychotherapy matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Institutional psychotherapy?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Institutional psychotherapy.