Gérard Mendel

In Encyclopedia by Michel Leclercq Views: 33

Gérard Mendel, born in 1930 and died on 14 October 2004, is a psychiatrist, sociopsychanalyste and French anthropologist.

His name is closely linked to the discipline he had created, the sociopsychanalyse, and the publication of the revolt against the father (1968), first book which made him known to the general public. He was also editor, Director of collection by Payot for thirty years (the first to translate Winnicott), the Éditions La Découverte more recently.

Since 1968, he has continued to develop his work, which includes some 30 books (and dozens of articles and reports), while building a collective practice of institutional intervention. He contributed to what he called a “social psychology of the subject” by the development of concepts to the articulation of the psychological and social.

The sociopsychanalyse

Two personal experiences led Gérard Mendel create the sociopsychanalyse:

• The first there in 1942 (12 years), he sees two French gendarmes, known to the family, come and stop his Jewish father: the young boy takes the measure of the strength of the authority to which to submit “blindly” these officials, whom he knows to work against their will, without direct threats. A work of thought never interrupted takes for him this time for origin on the two topics which structure the sociopsychanalyse: the power and the authority.

• The second develops gradually with the parallel pursuit of its work of psychoanalyst, which he draws three essential teachings:
  1. What lives in psychoanalysis sessions does not reflect any of the human psyche, but one fundamental dimension, that of the psychofamilial, dimension structured by unconscious processes, covering the first family and the emotional development and sexual child relations.
  2. To promote this return to childhood, the framework of psychoanalysis excludes necessarily any part of the current reality, social reality, in which contact personality yet continues to build and to form, as evidenced by the modes differ according to cultures. Mendel considered this second dimension of psychosocial. He pointed out at the same time that psychofamiliale and psycho-social dimension at the same time exist in all, complementary and articulated, with reciprocal and different effects depending on the times and contexts of life.
  3. The device used for psychoanalysis has a great impact on the quality of mental production: it is before the entire framework invented by Freud (sofa-armchair, analyst indented cut from social reality) that facilitates free associations and the emergence of the productions of the unconscious. Mendel will build the institutional device, collective framework to emerge as to develop the psychosocial dimension among participants.

If the dimension psychofamiliale, object of psychoanalysis, is largely dominated by fantasies, the psychosocial dimension builds and develops from the acts that we realize, acts with own power to change reality: after, i.e. after an Act, it is no longer as before, and it is irreversible. The power Act and the authority on the Act, motor psychosocialité, g. Mendel will lead to the creation of its major concept, the actepouvoir, with its corollary, the movement of appropriation of the Act, as fundamental anthropological movement is that of unconscious processes. The power is more what you do the power on the other.

Thus, the work of the sociopsychanalyse tool is not the isolated individual but the small group (homogeneous working group or peer group) in a concrete social structure or institution (hence the proximity of the sociopsychanalyse with institutional analysis). To better understand the functioning and the effects on the participants (in the group as between institutional groups), Gérard Mendel was its own group-tool to study, Desgenettes Group (1971) Group clinical research and intervention in the social field. This true network research and intervention in institutions communicate monthly by means of a newsletter whose contributions are collected by Desgenettes group to be distributed to all of the active groups. Each year, the groups come together in a common Weekend, to compare and criticize their experiences. To make clear the exchanges between groups, the first group was chosen as moderator, while another exposes its results. Then is a time of cooperation for a quarter of an hour, in which each of the listeners groups meet to develop their questions and comments. Then, the Exhibitor group withdrew in turn to develop his answers to the questions asked. And so on over the two days of meeting, for each of the groups. “The key lies in these times of consultation which will mobilize the collective understanding and can be explored the concept of”projection”and contre-projection” from group to group… Experimentation of this form of communication based on groups, and also the individuals composing them, intended to contribute to the self-organized historical movement… Most of this work is published by the Desgenettes in the small library Payot, under the title Sociopsychanalyse n ° 1 to n ° 8.

His work

His work, dense, that supported a vast culture, thus has the particularity of having faced a collective practice of land through stakeholder groups, the oldest is the Desgenettes-Agasp group permanently (created in 1971 and in which Gérard Mendel participated) alongside other groups in France, Argentina, Belgium, Quebec. Many clinical books reflect these interventions in a wide variety of workplaces, from school to the retirement home, passing by the company, unions, associations, local communities. A method of intervention in institutions was invented: the establishment of an institutional device which the main features are the constitution of homogeneous groups of trades and indirect communication (through written reviews) between them. This device is intended to be part of the natural course of institutional life. Older devices are in place for more than 20 years. The exercise of his “actepouvoir” by each is a constructive proposal to the end of the patriarchal society and its corollary, the authority, proposal with concrete practices for the exercise of participatory democracy (see)(Why democracy is down, 2003).

Since for the decolonization of the child (1971), the company is not a family (1992) up to A history of the Authority (2003) Gérard Mendel was always concerned about the vacuum left by the end of the relationship of authority as a model of social relations and the impossible return of this form, today more childlike that preparatory to the autonomy and responsibility, he preferred the school (from kindergarten to the Terminal) as one of the locations of his approach to learning of democracy through the development of the socialization of young people, as well between them with their teachers partners. It is from a device built to this educational site, the device of collective expression of students (DECE) on their own school, that is built for all students of the same class (and not only delegates) different socialization, “non-identifying” where it is built also in peer relations: not only competitive, individualistic and elitistbut more collective, egalitarian and solidarity.

More than 500 primary and secondary classes have practiced this device, in a link publicized in writing, via orientation-psychologist counsellor, with the teaching team. A large number of articles, conferences, radio and television interventions has been devoted to this strong line of his work, a film shot in a rural College in 2000 evidenced (“democracy in the school, JP Lebel, periphery”).