Le soin et la recherche en psychiatrie : un mariage heureux ?

Is research necessary for psychiatric care? On the contrary, could it prove to be counter-productive, reducing the scope of the field by the reductionism inherent in its methodology? This article examines the specific features of care in psychiatry, from the point of view of the history of our discipline and its close links with both clinical and fundamental research. Its main lines of development are then detailed, viewed through the lens of the ethical and epistemological challenges facing the discipline, in terms of their impact on care, and the compatibility between the question of care, and that of the quest for knowledge. The very essence of the former being to look after the subject's well-being, whereas that of the latter is often aimed primarily at the collective interest and indirectly at individual care, without necessarily guaranteeing it.