Les pavés du dire, ou quand la rue se fait réseau soignant

Goals

“I am a housed homeless person”. This statement says something about the experience of constructing an address – a term whose polysemy is immediately obvious in the context of therapeutic practices with people who frequent or have frequented the street. Under certain conditions, how can the street become a constellation of care?

Method

The street is considered here from the perspective of institutional psychotherapy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and phenomenology. I take a retrospective look at a clinical case, providing insights into, on the one hand, the creation of “spaces of habitability” (de Certeau) and, on the other, the “shared caregiving function” (Tosquelles). I discuss the clinical implications of these findings, as well as their impact on support and accommodation services for the unhoused.

Results

The street doesn’t exist: this is a prerequisite for any possible practice with whoever stays, lives, or makes use of the street. Thus, there is no “street” that can be essentialized: it is constantly made and unmade by those who cross it and inhabit it. The uses of the street – the ways in which it is inhabited – are considered on a case-by-case basis. A distinction between circulation, homelessness, and wandering is then sketched out, based on the concept of “pedestrian enunciation” (Michel de Certeau).

Discussion

Dwelling is always an attempt at dealing with dreams, ideals, and the impossible. Inhabitable spaces are created between shelters, homes, displacements, and circulations. From a clinical perspective, taking these singular ways of living into account is a prerequisite for any possible encounter. Sometimes, this encounter has therapeutic or even psychotherapeutic effects.

Conclusion

In light of the above, clinicians should be mindful of adopting a unanimously militant stance, a theoretical withdrawal, charitable kindness, or a desire to rehabilitate at all costs. These slippages are inevitably revealed as such in the interstices of a practice that should be polyphonic.