Between disease and disability: Rethinking the psychiatric critique of the 1975 French law in favor of disabled people
Entre maladie et handicap : repenser la critique psychiatrique de la loi du 30 juin 1975 d’orientation en faveur des personnes handicapées
Résumé
This article analyzes the controversy raised among psychiatrists by the law of the 30 June 1975 in favor of disabled people in France in the second half of the 1970s. This controversy played a major role in stabilizing definitions and representations of categories of disability and mental disorder, which still bear a strong influence on today's French debates upon “handicap psychique”. The first part of the article shows how the controversy emerged within the reform dynamics that dominated French health and social policies in the 1960s and 1970s. The second part examines the specific debate concerning a project of nursing homes for long-term mentally disordered people that took place within this controversy in order to show how it contributed to the redefinition of psychiatric chronicity.
Cet article analyse la controverse suscitée par la loi du 30 juin 1975 d’orientation en faveur des personnes handicapées parmi les psychiatres français au cours de la seconde moitié des années 1970. Cette controverse a joué en effet un rôle déterminant pour stabiliser et imposer une définition et des représentations des catégories de handicap et de maladie psychique qui marquent encore aujourd’hui le débat sur le « handicap psychique » en France. Dans un premier temps, l’article éclaire les conditions de la controverse en la situant dans la trajectoire d’ensemble de la dynamique réformatrice dans le domaine sanitaire et social au cours des années 1960 et 1970. Le second temps de l’article examine le débat spécifique autour d’une mesure de la loi d’orientation, la création de foyers de post-cure pour malades mentaux chroniques, pour montrer comment celui-ci a participé à redéfinir les enjeux de la chronicité psychiatrique. This article analyzes the controversy raised among psychiatrists by the law of the 30 June 1975 in favor of disabled people in France in the second half of the 1970s. This controversy played a major role in stabilizing definitions and representations of categories of disability and mental disorder, which still bear a strong influence on today's French debates upon “handicap psychique”. The first part of the article shows how the controversy emerged within the reform dynamics that dominated French health and social policies in the 1960s and 1970s. The second part examines the specific debate concerning a project of nursing homes for long-term mentally disordered people that took place within this controversy in order to show how it contributed to the redefinition of psychiatric chronicity.