The Politics of Observation: Documentary Film and Radical Psychiatry

O'Rawe, D. (2019). The Politics of Observation: Documentary Film and Radical Psychiatry. Journal of Aestheticsand Culture, 11(1), [1568791]. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2019.1568791

Published in:Journal of Aesthetics and Culture

Document Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record

Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal:Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal

Publisher rightsCopyright 2019 the authors.This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.

General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or othercopyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associatedwith these rights.

Take down policyThe Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made toensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in theResearch Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact openaccess@qub.ac.uk.

Download date:17. Dec. 2021

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=zjac20

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

ISSN: (Print) 2000-4214 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/zjac20

The politics of observation: documentary film andradical psychiatry

Des O’Rawe

To cite this article: Des O’Rawe (2019) The politics of observation: documentary film and radicalpsychiatry, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 11:1, 1568791, DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2019.1568791

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2019.1568791

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by InformaUK Limited, trading as Taylor & FrancisGroup.

Published online: 01 Feb 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 30

View Crossmark data

The politics of observation: documentary film and radical psychiatryDes O’Rawe

School of Arts, English, and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

ABSTRACTThe post-war counter-culture encouraged alternative ways of articulating the language ofdocumentary film, contributing to a wider critique of social institutions and the complicity ofthe mass media in constructing perceptions of authority. In relation to the politics ofmadness, this era also gave rise to a heightened awareness of psychiatric institutions assites of symbolic power rather than therapeutic care, informing a growing scepticism towardsboth traditionally assumed causes and categories of mental illness as well as the everydayconcept of rationality itself. This article offers a comparative analysis of different observationalfilmmaking styles in relation to their respective portrayals of various methods, personalities,and institutions associated with forms of radical psychiatry. It explores the impact and legacyof these cultural developments on films such as: Warrendale (Allan King, 1967); Asylum (PeterRobinson, 1972); San Clemente (Raymond Depardon and Sophie Ristelhueber, 1980); andEvery Little Thing/La Moindre des choses (Nicolas Philibert, 1996). Despite their cultural andformal differences, these films are similarly involved in negotiating not only problematicdistinctions between observation and intrusion, fiction and documentary, but also construc-tions of madness and sanity.

KEYWORDSFilm and psychiatry;observational documentary;Warrendale (film); R.D.Laing; Asylum (film); SanClemente (film); La BordeClinic; Every Little Thing(film)

Introduction: representing madness

As the popular medium most commonly associatedwith representations of psychosis it is not surprisingthat film has enjoyed a close relationship with psy-chiatry, or that so much of its dramatic content andcritical theory has been informed by psychiatric dis-course. Documentary filmmaking has played animportant role in this relationship (Stastny 1998,68–90), and its observational techniques, evidentialclaims and ethical concerns are invariably challengedby the task of representing psychiatric subjects andinstitutions: Do the formal conventions associatedwith the observational documentary, for example,serve to reinforce stereotypical images of “madness”,legitimizing the authority of psychiatry by being com-plicit in the very prejudices the filmmaker is claimingto subvert? Does the presence of the camera—even inseemingly democratic psychiatric communities—inevitably encourage a performance of identitiesrather than capturing the particular realities of lifeand relationships in that environment? Even if expli-citly supportive of certain alternative approaches tounderstanding and treating mental illness, is it everpossible to develop a documentary film practice cap-able of articulating advocacy without courting senti-mentality and inauthenticity?

This article explores these issues by engaging withthe work of several documentary filmmakers whohave aligned their observational style and social

commitments with a wider critique of conventionalpsychiatric medicine. In particular, it considers:Warrendale (Allan King, 1967, b&w, CA); Asylum(Peter Robinson, 1972, UK/US); San Clemente(Depardon 1984, b&w, FR/IT); and Every LittleThing/La Moindre des choses (Nicolas Philibert,1996, FR), films that ostensibly observe personalities,places, and therapeutic practices associated with“radical psychiatry”, a term understood here in itsbroad sense, i.e. encompassing a variety of cognatecounter-cultural tendencies, such as: anti-psychiatry,critical psychiatry, post-psychiatry, radical therapy,institutional psychotherapy, and schizo-analysis.

Throughout the post-war period, psychiatrists, psy-chologists and other mental healthcare workers cameunder increasing pressure to understand mental illnessas a sociological phenomenon rather than a biomedicalfact, a consequence of capitalism and its peculiar struc-tural formations rather than the product of diagnosableneurochemical and emotional disorders. From this per-spective, the mental hospital—or asylum—was increas-ingly viewed as a locus of symbolic power rather thantherapeutic care, staffed by willing or deluded accom-plices in the violence of classifying individuals as being“schizophrenic”, “sociopathic”, “depressive”, “neuro-tic”, or however so defined by the Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Disorders (i.e. DSM-1 (1952), andDSM-2 (1968)). Between 1960–62, a remarkable num-ber of important, if methodologically diverse, criticalstudies on psychiatry andmental illness were published:

CONTACT Des O’Rawe d.orawe@qub.ac.uk School of Arts, English, and Languages, Queen’s University, Belfast. BT7 1NN. N. Ireland, UK.

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE2019, VOL. 11, 1568791https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2019.1568791

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permitsunrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization (1961);Joseph Gabel’s False Consciousness (1962); ErvingGoffman’s Asylums (1961); R.D. Laing’s The DividedSelf: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (1960)and The Self and Others (1961); Martti Siirala’s TheSchizophrenia of the Individual and Society (1961);Harry Stack Sullivan’s posthumously published papers,Schizophrenia as a Human Process (1962); and ThomasS. Szasz’s bestselling The Myth of Mental Illness:Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961);as was Gregory Bateson’s early research on the familyand the structural origins of schizophrenia. The year1961 also “marked the slow beginning of the Basaglianrevolution in Gorizia”, which sought to democratizeItalian psychiatric care by dismantling that country’sfarrago of decrepit mental hospitals (Foot 2015, 50).Opposition to mainstream psychiatry and psychologywas also encouraged at this time by the New Left, withwritings by figures such as Antonio Gramsci, ErnstBloch, Eric Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse offering “re-readings” of classical Marxism through the lens of cul-ture, ideas, being and consciousness—a reorientationthat was to prove especially influential within the ranksof the more activist anti-psychiatry movement.

A growing scepticism towards traditional psychia-tric methods and institutions was also being reflectedin contemporary popular culture through, for exam-ple, bestselling novels such as Winfred van Atta’sShock Treatment (1961), Catch-22 (Joseph Heller,1961), and Ken Kelsey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’sNest (1962), all of which were subsequently adaptedinto major Hollywood films (in 1964, 1970, and 1975respectively). Sam Fuller’s classic B-movie, ShockCorridor (1963), meanwhile, tapped into Cold Warpreoccupations with the effects of “combat stress”,psychopharmacology, paranoia, and the general dis-quiet caused by Stanley Milgram’s Obedience (1962),which comprised documentary recordings of his con-troversial psychological experiments (which had beeninspired by the contemporary trial of AdolfEichmann in Jerusalem). Interestingly, but not sur-prisingly, Fuller’s attempts to provide a realistic por-trayal of how patients were being treated in Americanpsychiatric hospitals fell foul of the censors: “At thebeginning of Shock Corridor, I wanted to show […]naked men and women chained together on benchesin a long corridor, sitting in their own filth […] TheHollywood censor board refused me permission.I produced photographs from several mental institu-tions showing this was no fabrication and they stillsaid no” (Fuller 2012, 74). As a veteran of WWII,who had participated in the 1945 liberation of theFalkenau camps in Czechoslovakia, Fuller was doubt-less alert to the “concentrationary” connotations ofsuch images, and their potential to ask how the so-called Free World justified incarcerating so many ofits most vulnerable citizens.

This contradiction also resonates throughFrederick Wiseman’s still controversial documentary,Titicut Follies (1967); which itself became famouslyentangled in complicated court cases, with publicscreenings effectively banned by the MassachusettsSupreme Court until the mid-1990s. Wiseman’s filmobserves the institutional processes at the BridgewaterState Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The reality itreveals is one of a hospital/prison largely comprisedof desolate patients/inmates being subjected to rou-tine degradation and bureaucratic indifference.Footage of patients being made to strip, or beingforce-fed, and demeaned and infantilised within theAmerican judicio-medical panopticon was a powerfulindictment of prevailing attitudes to the treatment ofmental illness there, and elsewhere. While clearly animportant work in any study of the relations betweendocumentary and psychiatry, Titicut Follies primarilyexposes the failures of a system wedded to traditionalprejudices around mental illness (and, in this parti-cular case, resistant to the Kennedy Administration’s1963 Community Mental Health Act (CMHA)).Although Wiseman tended to eschew the journalisticapproach of the classic “direct cinema” style (impor-tantly, he had originally been trained as a lawyerrather than a journalist), Titicut Follies does confrontits audience—when the film was permitted to haveone—with disturbing visual evidence about how suchfacilities were being managed, and the behaviour ofthose who worked there.

While not itself concerned with the emergence ofalternative approaches to psychiatric care, TiticutFollies offers an instructive depiction of the kinds ofinstitutional cultures and healthcare regimes thatgrowing numbers of social activists wanted to abolishin the 1960s and 1970s. The film’s history—andWiseman’s distinctive editing style—has made ita key work in discussions about documentary ethicsand the filming of psychiatric patients. Combining anunflinching commitment to social reality with highlyexpressive—modernist, even—techniques, TiticutFollies also continues to divide opinion over whetherits method is subversive or transgressive, ethno-graphic or pornographic. Even amongst those docu-mentary filmmakers generally appreciative ofWiseman’s work, there is ambivalence about thisparticular film; according to Albert Maysles, forexample: “Titicut Follies was trying to put down thesystem, but [Wiseman] hurt the very people he meantto be protecting: the patients, the way he filmed them,with very little humanity” (McElhaney 2009, 160). Inits subject matter, visual style and “‘day in the life’[narrative] structure, and the broader metaphoricalmovement from life to death” (Grimshaw and Ravetz2009, 47), Titicut Follies is a useful touchstone againstwhich Allan King’s Warrendale (1967), for example,might also be judged, especially in relation to how it

2 D. O’RAWE

represents the progressive therapies associated withthe Warrendale project. Importantly though, whereasWiseman invariably maintains a detached relation-ship to his subjects, King’s observational style affordsthe filmmaker more scope for interaction and directsocial advocacy.

Warrendale: holding sessions

Warrendale concerns a group of severely disturbedchildren and adolescents resident at a therapy centreon the outskirts of Toronto. Managed by JohnL. Brown (a senior social worker and political activistfor Ontario’s centre-left New Democratic Party(NDP)), and its psychiatric director, Dr. MartinFischer (a child psychiatrist who specialised in playand art therapies), the Warrendale facility had beenattracting controversy since the late 1950s; largelybecause its experimental treatment programmeinvolved therapeutic holding and intensive re-parenting techniques, and encouraged physical con-tact between the young people and their carers andpsychiatrists. (In this respect, King’s film is also aninteresting precursor to more contemporary docu-mentaries on a similar subject, such as KimLonginotto’s Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (2009, UK),or Who Cares About Kelsey? (Dan Habib, 2012), forexample.) While child psychiatry and developmentalpsychology had become increasingly urgent fields ofresearch after WWII, serious studies on the effects oftherapeutic holding and physical intervention in thetreatment of disturbed and traumatised children werestill thin on the ground. The methods deployed atWarrendale were influenced by theories associated

with the problem of infantile emotional deprivation(René Spitz), group dynamics (Fritz Redl), milieutherapy (Bruno Bettleheim), and attachment (JohnBowlby), as well as those elucidating the psycho-dramatic complexities of the modern family (namely,Laing, Goffman, Bateson, and others). The “holdingsessions” involved one or more carers using boththeir arms and legs to forcibly cradle the upset childor teenager, while simultaneously allowing them togive full vent to their feelings of anger and frustrationwithout physically hurting themselves or others. Inbeing restrained in this way, the children wereactively encouraged to express their emotions asfully—and forcibly—as possible, with a view toenabling them to develop a stronger sense of trustin “parental” constraint and thus, begin to feel moresecure in their relationship with benevolent authority.

For Brown, Fischer and the other carers involvedin the Warrendale project, this degree of therapeutictactility and physical interaction transformed how thechildren perceived their therapists and social workers,creating a “safe space” for them to revisit traumaticexperiences of parental/social neglect, abandonment,anxiety, and abuse, and to explore and openly talkabout what might be triggering their often distraughtresponses to given, everyday “household” situations.Although Brown and Fischer did not withhold tran-quilizing medication from the young people in theircare, they were committed to replacing pharmacolo-gical interventions with more holistic and beha-vioural forms of child psychotherapy. All of whichmade Warrendale an opportune subject fora filmmaker like King, who “on numerous occasions[…] disclosed that his formative experience of family

Figure 1. Warrendale (Warrendale Press Pack 1967): Carol being held by Terri and Walter during a holding session—thecontroversial therapeutic intervention associated with the Warrendale facility.

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 3

disintegration during early childhood in theDepression influenced his lifelong filmic preoccupa-tions” (Druick 2010, 3).

Initially trained and employed by the CanadianBroadcasting Corporation (CBC Vancouver), King’searly works, such as Skidrow (1956), The PembertonValley (1958), A Matter of Pride (1961), or The Pursuitof Happiness: Beyond theWelfare State (1962) centred onhomelessness, social disintegration, poverty and unem-ployment. While he would go on to have a varied careeras an independent filmmaker, it was the television doc-umentary format that best suited his talents and tempera-ment, a format that by the 1960s had become increasinglyopen to some measure of vérité experimentation; as in,for example, CBC’s 1958 popular series,CandidEye, or itssuccessor, theDocumentary ’60 series (see, Hogarth 2002,69–80). King’s major films from this period offereda perspective on social reality—especially, in relation toVancouver’s less than generous welfare provision—atodds with the progressive self-image the province wastrying to project, leaving his relationship with CBC—oneof the principal purveyors of that image—somewhatstrained. By the end of the 1950s he had set up his ownproduction company, A.K.A. (Allan King Associates);and although still working largely for CBC, commissionsand freelance contracts at that time promised him greatereditorial and creative independence, and permitted himto retain the theatrical distribution rights for his films(which proved important in the case of Warrendale).These new working arrangements also provided himwith more scope to develop a distinctive style of docu-mentary filmmaking. For example, althoughWarrendalewas originally commissioned by Patrick Watson andGeorge Desmond for CBC, its seemingly loose observa-tional approach contrasts markedly with CBC’s TheDisordered Mind multi-series (1960–66, RobertAnderson Associates), which comprised conventionalpublic service documentaries aimed at informing (reas-suring) the Canadian public about the positive role ofmedical and statutory bodies in treating severe mentalillness, regardless of its more complex causes and sociol-ogy. The third Disordered Mind series was broadcast inautumn1966 and focused on the treatment of profoundlydisturbed young people; and perhaps King had theseepisodes in mind when he remarked that Warrendalewas not simply “a demonstration of treatment […], treat-ment is the modus vivendi of the environment in whichthe filming occurs, but it is not the subject matter of thefilm” (Warrendale Press Pack 1967).

Although King’s observational style—in keepingwith contemporary Canadian and French vérité prac-tices—eschewed the illusion of illustrative or exposi-tory objectivity in favour a more openly collaborativeapproach, he claimed that the human element wasparamount to everything he did:

A lot of cinéma vérité hinged on the drama that camefrom the event. You have to find a sufficient tensionwithin a work to sustain the length of what you wantto explore. But for me, it’s always been about people,my fascination has always been with individual peo-ple or individual people within the group—personalactuality drama, if you will. (Blaine, Feldman, andHardcourt 2002, 88–89)

In conceiving of documentary as “personal actualitydrama”, King invested considerable time and energyinto developing close relationships with both hisproduction crew and the individuals featuring inhis films. Ahead of shooting Warrendale, for exam-ple, he spent over a month visiting the centre andgetting to know some of the young people and staff,before introducing them to the film’s cameramanand sound engineer (Bill Brayne and Russ Heise),who then visited with him every day for a furthercouple of weeks. Not solely in attendance to“demonstrate the Warrendale treatment”, Kingactively sought to integrate his filmmaking projectinto the everyday life of the centre, rather thancontriving fly-on-the-wall detachment. This com-mitment to democratic, informal and somewhatfree-wheeling observational filmmaking was alsoperhaps influenced by his association with contem-porary Beat culture, experimental theatre, and thebohemian communities in Ibiza and London: “Kingwas of a generation that came of age in the 1950s,and his interest in observational cinema was influ-enced by both psychotherapy and the LivingTheatre” (Druick 2010, 4). His endorsement of var-ious communal and experimental ways of livingreadily coincided with the forms of therapy beingdeveloped at Warrendale, where the attempt tocreate a radically empathetic relationship betweenthe young residents and their therapists sought toprotect that environment from the authoritarianstructures and objectifying processes characteristicof other—more typical—mental healthcare regimes.

The film was shot over five weeks, producing fortyhours of footage, edited into a 100-minute produc-tion (which CBC duly refused to broadcast, largelybecause King would not agree to edit out instances ofthe children swearing). Comprised of twenty “epi-sodes”, Warrendale culminates in the children’s reac-tions to the sudden death of the house cook, Dorothy,and their attendance at her funeral; a very popularfigure in the house, she is described at one point inthe film by the senior social worker (Walter Gunn) as“a cook-mother … the only service staff involved inthe programme”, and the news of her death provokesextreme responses in some of the older children andteenagers. Although initially shaped around a “Day inthe Life” format, King readily restructured the latter

4 D. O’RAWE

parts of the film to enhance the impact of the reac-tions to Dorothy’s death—an event that actually tookplace much earlier in the production schedule,a manipulation of real-time chronology that exempli-fies how King’s method seems to diverge from thetenets of classic cinéma vérité; although it is perhapsalso important not to exaggerate the nature andextent of this divergence—reality is often strangerthan documentary, and as William Rothman remarksin his essay, “Eternal Vérités”: “In every cinéma véritémoment, the filmmaker happens on a situation sosublimely poignant […] that we can hardly believethe stroke of fortune that reveals the world’s aston-ishing genius for improvisation” (Rothman 2004,297). Other aspects of the film also pressurised itsobservational mode towards fictionality and drama-tized actuality.

Although initially scripted by Watson and King,the film contains no commentary, interviews, titlemusic (bar a curious wobble-effect insert during theend title sequence) or other non-diegetic elements.However, Warrendale’s formal austerity does not somuch underwrite its observational integrity as createa blank theatrical backdrop against which personal-ities and conflicts emerge more vividly. While its miseen scène was also influenced by practical considera-tions (such as integrating a small crew into a confinedenvironment, and the need to minimise intrusivehand-held shooting and cumbersome sound record-ing set-ups), Warrendale is especially attentive to howthe presence of the camera inevitably blurs distinc-tions between candid and contrived modes of beha-viour, and how this affects the behaviour of thechildren, as well as that of their carers and therapists.Take, for example, the opening segment of the film,

comprising three sequences: the children beingwoken up for breakfast, followed by them going toschool in another building within the facility; andthen a “closed” meeting between John Brown andthree carers (Gunn, Terri Adler, and Maurice Flood).

The film’s opening title sequence is a long aerialshot, presumably taken from a fixed camera positionon the roof of an adjacent tower block, framingAdler’s car as it arrives at the centre, and pulls upoutside “House Two”. As if to accentuate the contrastbetween exterior and interior worlds, perspective andscale, the subsequent shot is hand-held and takenfrom inside the kitchen of the house, with a kettle(ominously) coming to the boil in the foreground andAdler visible in the background—initially, throughthe kitchen window—as she hurriedly enters thehouse, greets a colleague and throws off her coat,before the hand-held camera follows her upstairs(often out of frame, and with erratic sound quality)as she endeavours to coax some of the children out ofbed, and encourage others to go down for theirbreakfast. The camera continues to follow Terri intoone of the bedrooms, where she draws open thecurtains and picks up a cup and a baby-bottle(which belongs to Irene, a teenage girl). A radio orrecord player can be heard loudly in the background(playing the Rolling Stones’ “Play with Fire”), asCarol (another teenager) angrily resists Terri’sattempts to get her out of bed. She becomes increas-ingly irritated by Terri, and refuses to budge. Thissituation results in a holding session, in which Terriand Maurice force Carol out from under the blanketand hold her. At this point, Walter arrives andreplaces both Terri and Maurice in holding Carol.The framing also changes from rough and unsteady

Figure 2. Warrendale (Warrendale Press Pack 1967): A facial close-up of Carol—exemplifying the film’s preference for carefulcomposition and “personal actuality drama” over naïve cinema vérité techniques.

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 5

medium shots of Terri and Maurice grappling withCarol, to closer shots of her, and of Walter, culminat-ing in an extreme close-up of Carol as she appears torelax, comforted rather than contained by Walter’sholding (Figure 1). The film then cuts to a mediumshot of Walter and Terri (now downstairs) discussingwhether Carol should go to school that day, followedby Walter playfully lifting Tony (a young boy, who—like Carol—will become one of the film’s principalcharacters), followed by a very long shot of the chil-dren walking together to the school building, withTony waving and shouting at King and his crew froma distance.

This opening segment concludes with a sequencetaken from a meeting later that day involving Terri,Walter, and John Brown. The meeting focuses onTerri’s management of Carol that morning, andinvolves Brown (framed in a number of close shots)carefully chastising Terry and warning against “thedangers of precipitous holding”, advising her how torelate to Carol in a more therapeutically effective way.Although running at just over three minutes in dura-tion, Brown is rarely out of the frame in this scene,and even a brief frontal medium close-up of Terriincludes his expressive hand movements in the fore-ground. When Walter interjects to add support toBrown’s concerns about Terri’s relationship withCarol, there is no cut as the camera smoothly pansright to frame Walter in a similar medium close-up,signifying continuity and consensus. Throughout thesequence, which is the only one featuring Brown in theentire film, King’s mise en scène unambiguouslyaffirms Brown’s authority, his role as a mentor-manager and his centrality to the entire Warrendaleproject. In a later sequence, Carol and Tony are filmedwith Terri and Dr. Martin Fischer (described in thetitles as the facility’s “Medical Psychiatric Director”).In this instance, hand-held cinematography anda general atmosphere of playfulness and informalityprevails, as Fischer talks to Tony about his home townor encourages Carol to write some letters to her family.There is an intentional contrapuntality between thisscene and the earlier one involving Brown: here, Kingseems to want his audience to see the theory being putinto practice, and the beneficial effects of this noveltherapy on the children—and on Terri, which isimportant given that the film is as much about thecarers, therapists and social workers as it is about thechildren and young people resident in the facility(Figure 2).

Although King would bring his “personal actu-ality drama” approach to a more controversial levelin his next film, A Married Couple (1969),Warrendale demonstrates observational filmmakingas an essentially creative process of shaping andnegotiating whatever reality it finds itself encoun-tering, a process seemingly predicated as much on

a dramatic imperative as a documentary one.However, within the context of the film’s subjectmatter—and the remit of this essay—such anapproach remains problematic. Despite itself, forexample, Warrendale reinforces stereotypical imagesof mentally disturbed children, and the hand-heldframing and use of close shots during sequencesshowing their emotional outbursts, tantrums, andviolence dramatizes this behaviour in ways thatimmediately provide the audience with a clinical—privileged—perspective on what is happening.There is a thin line between dramatized actualityand “actuality drama”, and in the case ofWarrendale everyone is performing: the therapistsand psychiatrists—including, Brown—are as con-scious of the filmmaker’s presence as the youngresidents. Needless to say, at no point do themakers of the film hand the camera over to theyoung people, or challenge the authority of therapy(or documentary) per se; on the contrary, they arethere to endorse—formally, as well as politically—the therapeutic methods associated with JohnBrown’s project.

Asylum: vérité therapy

Like King, Peter Robinson (also a Canadian) foundthe experience of filming in an alternative therapeuticcommunity professionally and personally transforma-tive. Asylum is inspired by the psychiatry of R.D.Laing—and involves observing communal life inone of the post-Kingsley Hall households (inLondon’s Archway district) established in the early1970s by Laing and other members of thePhiladelphia Association (initially comprising DavidCooper, Joseph Berke, Leon Redler, and AaronEsterson). Although Robinson’s background was intheatre management, by the 1960s he was enjoyingsome successes as a producer on several documen-taries (including Francis Thompson and AlexanderHammid’s Academy award-winning multi-screenshort, To Be Alive! (1964)). After reading TheDivided Self and The Politics of Experience, he wroteto Laing with a proposal to make a series of televisiondocumentaries in which Laing would interview pro-minent figures or celebrities of the day, State of Mind.When this project fell through (although, Laing madevarious attempts to revive it during the 1970s, includ-ing discussions at one point involving the BBC andAllen King Associates), both agreed to push aheadwith the production of a film that would documentthe work of the Philadelphia Association (Robinson1970). Several filmed interviews with Laing ensuedbefore it was agreed that Robinson and a two-mancrew would live in one of the Association houses inArchway while making this feature-length documen-tary. In the early spring of 1971, Robinson, Richard

6 D. O’RAWE

Adams (camera and editor), and William Steele(sound engineer) resided for six weeks with overa dozen people in a house on Duncombe Road(Smith and Young 1972, 58–59).

Although Laing disliked the term “anti-psychiatry”—originally coined by Cooper in 1962 when he was settingup Villa 21 (an experimental hospital ward in ShenleyHospital, Hertfordshire)—Laing’s work similarly chal-lenged the assumption that psychiatric patients werenecessarily devoid of authentic agency, unreachable andincapable of meaningful communication and socialinteraction. In rejecting the mainstream medical modelof mental illness, Laing had initially turned to psycho-analysis and the emerging psychotherapeutic approachesbeing promoted at the time by figures such as DonaldWinnicott and Charles Rycroft at the Tavistock Clinic, aswell as philosophical paradigms derived from existential-phenomenology (especially, Karl Jaspers and Jean-PaulSartre), and social anthropology (Bateson and MargaretMead). As a relatively young (military) psychiatrist in theearly 1950s, Laing had begun questioning the efficacy ofconventional psychiatric diagnoses, the increasingly rou-tine nature of referrals for electroconvulsive therapy(ECT), and the widespread prescription of anti-psychotic medication. Focussing instead on the patientas a person rather than an object afflicted by somepathologically classifiable disease, Laing argued thatwhatever else madness was, it wasn’t madness. Rather,it was a particular state of mind and mode of expression,one that responded therapeutically to imaginative inter-action, empathetic listening, and the fact of anotherperson or people “being present”: put simply, it was lessa mental disorder than a different way of envisagingreality and relating to society. For Laing, the aim ofpsychiatry should not be to treat patients but rather toaccompany them on their personal voyage throughmemories, traumas, dreams, identities, desires, grief, des-pair, faith, and whatever else was there to be encoun-tered; and if there was a therapeutic guidebook ormanual for this relationship, Laing contended, it was tobe found in the therapist’s own sensitivity to the intricatetextures of lived experience, and the examples of litera-ture, art, music, andmystical writings, not in theDSM orsome weighty textbook on clinical psychiatry.

Inevitably, Laing has been popularly over-identified with the Sixties and an image of himselfas one of the counter-culture’s leading lights, moreprophet than physician, wild-eyed psychedelic sha-man rather than radical mental healthcare reformer.Szasz (no friend of existential-phenomenology or left-wing politics) even went so far as to describe Laing as“a medical-psychiatric conman, a typically moderncharlatan ‘soul doctor’ and master self-dramatiser”(Szasz 2009, 103). While many aspects of Laing’sthinking—and lifestyle—certainly coincided with theiconoclastic zeitgeist of the times, his contribution tothe development of more enlightened approaches to

understanding and treating mental illness is consider-able, and has remained influential within the fields ofsocial and psychoanalytical psychiatry (Nelson 1972,226). Even in his last book, Wisdom, Madness andFolly: The Making of a Psychiatrist 1927–1957, Laingwas still correcting prevailing misperceptions abouthis views:

I never idealized mental suffering, or romanticiseddespair, dissolution, torture or terror. I have neversaid that parents or families or society ‘cause’mental illness, genetically or environmentally.I have never denied the existence of patterns ofmind and conduct that are excruciating. I havenever called myself an anti-psychiatrist, and havedisclaimed the term when my friend and colleague,Dr. David Cooper, introduced it. However, I agreewith the anti-psychiatric thesis that by and largepsychiatry functions to exclude and repress thoseelements society wants excluded and repressed.(Laing 1985, 8)

In keeping with the ethos of the PhiladelphiaAssociation and the experience of Kingsley Hall, theArchway community aspired to have, as Laing put it,“no staff, no patients, no locked doors, no psychiatrictreatment to stop or change states of mind” (Laing1985, ix). However, as Robinson’s film shows, therewas a discernible organisational structure and someof the residents had defined roles within that struc-ture. Michael Yocum, for example, was responsiblefor maintaining the house rules and ensuring all theresidents contributed to the rent, as well as facilitat-ing—albeit loosely and democratically—ad hoc housemeetings to discuss problematic behaviour or conflictbetween residents. Although Leon Redler and PaulZeal feature in the film at times as “therapists inresidence”, there were no Philadelphia Associationtherapists actually living in the house during theproduction of Asylum. Laing was travelling inCeylon (Sri Lanka) and India throughout 1971–72,and Robinson inserted several sequences from theinterviews they had filmed in 1970 as a way allottingtime in the film to explain what the community istrying to achieve, or—as in one scene—just sittingsilently and attentively amongst a group of residents.The film’s introductory sequence, for example,includes footage of Laing in a spacious front room,sitting in an armchair, explaining the origins of theKingsley Hall community and the importance ofadopting non-judgemental and non-interventionistrelationships with the other residents. The film thencuts to a panning shot of a skyline of terrace rooftops,travelling along a row of dilapidated—and in somecases, boarded-up—houses on Duncombe Road,before the camera frames a postman delivering mailto the house, and a close shot of the number on thefront door, “43”. As with Warrendale, the beginningof the film establishes the community as residing on

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 7

the social margins of the city—in this case, a run-down street in a part of North London designated forredevelopment rather than amidst Toronto’s sprawl-ing, suburban limbo (Figure 3).

In addition to Michael Yocum, among the resi-dents who feature in the film are: David Bell (amiddle-aged scientist, who often communicates byscribbling gnomic messages and graffiti, or speakingin a surreal idiolect (in which Leon Redler, forexample, is “the Red Lion”, and the community itselfis the “happy canny loonies”, etc.); Julia, a youngwoman who at times regresses into an extremelyhelpless, infantile state; Francis Gillet, formerly ofKingsley Hall, who mischievously performs for thecamera with an exaggerated, antic walk; Jamie,a man in his early twenties from a Scottish ruralfarming background; Wendy Galson, another for-mer resident of Kingsley Hall; Mary, who is referredto in the 2015 DVD audio commentary as “SisterMary Simon”; Richard, a working-class Londoner;Paula, a young English woman; Astrid, a Norwegianartist and musician; and Lee, a psychiatrist fromLong Island who had “opted out” of mainstreamclinical practice to spend time living ina Philadelphia Association community, and who isfinding the experience of sharing a house with Davidvery difficult. While observing how the others in thehouse respond to David’s disruptive behaviour isa key strand in the narrative of Asylum, there areother important threads woven into the film: forexample, how the residents (including David—andespecially, Mary and Francis) care for Julia; howtherapists like Redler and Zeal integrate into thecommunity; and the arrival of various visitors to

the house (especially, Jamie’s father, who suggeststhat a secretly arranged blind date might speed-uphis son’s “recovery”), or the gauche medical student(who arrives one Sunday to study the house for hisgraduate thesis). While one contemporary critic ofAsylum praised it as being “not another audio-visualaid for explanation of another theory of psychology;rather it disturbs normal film rhetoric,” it is—if notquite an “explanation”—certainly a justification ofthe work of the Association, and Laing’s theories inparticular (Silverstein 1973, 8). Of course, it is unli-kely that the Association would have agreed to itsproduction, or the residents given their consent tobe filmed (and for Asylum to be released and dis-tributed), had its ostensible aim not been to showhow living together in this ramshackle accommoda-tion, rather than inside the institutionalised mentalhealthcare regime, can prove to be a genuinely ther-apeutic experience. While the film adheres loosely toa conventional dramatic structure, the varied andinformal quality of its assemblage of sequences alsoreflects the culture of benign anarchy that existswithin the house. However, the presence ofRobinson himself in a number of these scenes raisesquestions about whether or not such participationcontributes to, or detracts from, the film’s observa-tional integrity.

In one sense, the visible involvement of Robinsonand his production crew in the everyday life of thisparticular community is unremarkable: it is an “openhouse” of sorts and residents are free to come and go,and—within certain limits—behave however theyplease. It is also—like House Two in Warrendale—acrowded and confined environment in which the line

Figure 3. Asylum (Peter Robinson, 1972): The opening title sequence, featuring Duncombe Road and the PhiladelphiaAssociation house.

8 D. O’RAWE

between observation and participation inevitably dis-solves, and while residents like David, Francis, andAstrid do “perform” for the camera at times,Robinson includes that reflexive dimension in thefinal cut. In addition to sequences that includeRobinson being part of social situations in the house(or being observed observing), there are two scenes inwhich he is filmed conversing “privately” with indivi-dual residents: firstly, with Jamie; and then at the end ofthe film, with David. In both cases, Robinson adoptsa loose conversational style that reflects something ofthe spirit of Laing’s approach to communicating withpeople who are experiencing psychosis and seriousemotional difficulties, and is designed to further blurthe line between outsider and insider, filmmaker andtherapist. While Robinson seems at worst naively insis-tent in encouraging Jamie to open up about what he“really wants”, the conversation with David is perhapsmore problematic.

If the narrative structure of Asylum is built aroundany core dramatic event, it is the on-going conflictbetween David and a number of other residents,a conflict that remains unresolved after the house meet-ing convened by Redler and Michael Yocum (Figure 4).However, in the film’s closing sequence Robinsonappears to succeed in maintaining a lucid conversationwith David, who mentions details about his career inscientific research and family relations. The significanceof this scene is however ambiguous: Has it beenincluded to ensure that the film represents David morefully, or to show how the filmmaker himself—asa sympathetic and supportive presence—can success-fully communicate with David? If the latter is the case,are the filmmakers guilty of exaggerating their integra-tion into the community, elevating themselves and theirmotives above those of the other visitors—who the film

tends to depict as muddled intruders, voyeurs, and out-siders? Perhaps, if Robinson had really wanted to be trueto the alternative vision and culture of the PhiladelphiaAssociation and R. D. Laing, instead of closing the filmwith his normal conversationwith David, hemight haveconcluded it with some footage from the discussion thattook place six months later when he screened a roughcut of the film to the Archway community.

San clemente: abolishing the Asylum

In a letter to Laing, dated 8 February 1977, Artkino (aTorino-based film distribution co-operative) agreedto distribute Asylum in Italy, with Giulio Einaudicontracted to publish an accompanying book com-prising an Italian translation of the film’s screenplayand an introduction written by Franca OngaroBasaglia, the wife of Franco Basaglia. Artkino dulyinformed Laing of their plans: “The publishing houseand Franca Basaglia, and we of course, intend topresent the film (original copy with subtitles) andthe book together in Milan towards the end ofMarch. Members of Psichiatria Democratica, journal-ists specialised in psychiatric information and filmcritics will be invited” (Artkino 1977). In response,Laing promptly instructed his solicitors to threatenArtkino and Robinson with legal action if the eventwent ahead, demanding the right to inspect the pub-lication prior to its distribution. There are a numberof interesting aspects to this incident, not the least ofwhich being Laing’s reaction to this invitation. Hewas always keen to see his work gain internationalattention, and he had hitherto valued Robinson’sdocumentaries (in addition to Asylum, they hadmade three shorts together: Breathing and Running(1971, 18 mins.); R.D. Laing in the USA (1972,

Figure 4. Asylum (Peter Robinson, 1972): at a house meeting, David Bell and Leon Redler try to resolve a problem.

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 9

23 mins.); and Psychiatry and Violence (1973,24 mins.)). By the mid-1970s, however, Laing hadeffectively parted company with the PhiladelphiaAssociation (and it from him), becoming more inter-ested in Eastern mysticism and meditation, and re-birthing techniques. Perhaps, he felt that Asylum wasno longer representative of his work and should bearchived rather than revived, or that he was annoyed(not unjustifiably, perhaps) at becoming an after-thought to a project in which his initial support andcollaboration had been instrumental. It is also quitepossible that he was not particularly well disposedtowards the prospect of the Basaglias commentingfurther on his theories and “prefacing” Robinson’sfilm. Franca Ongaro had already variously translatedinto Italian key works by Maxwell Jones, Goffman,Gregorio Bermann, and her extensive interview withLaing had been published in 1975. In their La mag-gioranza deviante: L’ideologia del controllo socialetotale (1971), the Basaglias had suggested that theLaingian version of “the therapeutic community”was politically ineffectual, and that it encouraged“the illusion […] that you can somehow ‘leave thegame,’ and attempt to create a non-organised organi-sation which is outside the world of ‘power’ and itsinstitutions” (Foot 2015, 120).

Like Laing, Franco Basaglia was a conventionallytrained psychiatrist whose thinking became increas-ingly influenced by the post-war revival of existenti-alist thought, and hermeneutical phenomenology.Basaglia’s worldview was also shaped by the compli-cated social history of Italian fascism, a history thatincluded his own experience of political imprison-ment at the end of the war. Fascism, war, and post-war economic hardship in Italy conspired to perpe-tuate prejudices against mentally illness, and suchattitudes were reflected in the atrocious conditionsin which psychiatric patients were still being kept inhospitals and asylums throughout the country. ForBasaglia, the abolition of these institutions was alsopart of “a more generalised critique of power, socialcontrol and the production of marginality, devianceand difference in capitalist societies, of which themanicomio (mental hospital) came to be treated asjust one example” (Forgacs 2016, 211). The Basagliaswere never alone in their struggle for radical changesto Italy’s mental health care regime in the 1960s and1970s, but the founding of Psichiatria Democratica in1973 was due in no small part to their efforts, as wasthe approval of the Law 180 (“Basaglia’s Law”) in1978. With their years of activism now vindicatedby this new legislative provision, the Basaglias andothers pressurised for effective implementation of itsdirectives, and for political assurances that the transi-tion from a culture of psychiatric hospitalisation tocommunity-based mental healthcare structures wouldbe carefully managed and adequately resourced.

Unfortunately, winning the peace would prove asdifficult as winning the war and “the struggle againsttotal institutions would go on for another twentyyears despite the law” (Foot 2015, 383).

In early 1977, Raymond Depardon travelled toTrieste on a photojournalistic assignment coveringa story about the San Giovanni Psychiatric Hospital,which was being closed and transformed intoa therapeutic community, with no new patients beingadmitted and existing patients being gradually reinte-grated into society. The developments in Trieste exem-plified the radical agenda being set by the PsichiatriaDemocratica movement, and its implications reverb-erated far beyond Italy. According to Depardon,Basaglia encouraged him to support the campaign byvisiting other manicomi, and producing a body ofphotographic work that would help to document andfurther publicise the appalling conditions in theseinstitutions: “You’ll photograph patients here whoyou won’t see anywhere else, but it’s exactly the samein France and America. The psychiatric hospital madethem that way; now it’s too late, there’s nothing elseI can do for them […] Take your photographs, other-wise people won’t believe us” (Depardon 2014, npg).For the next four years, Depardon periodically visitedvarious manicomi (principally, in and around Turin,Arezzo, Naples, and Venice), photographing everydaylife in the asylums, and hospital psychiatric wards. Inaddition to the feature-length documentary, SanClemente, shot in February 1980 with SophieRistelhueber, in 1984 Depardon published a series ofphotographs in an exhibition catalogue (with anaccompanying essay by Bernard Cuau) followed byhis 2014 photography book, Manicomio: SecludedMadness; and various contact sheets provided theimages for his contribution to the French televisionshort film series, Contacts (Depardon and RogerIkhlef, 1989, Fr., 13 mins), in which he ruminates onthe relations between voyeurism and aestheticism,intrusion and projection. Although not directly relatedto his work on the manicomi, Depardon’s preoccupa-tion with psychiatric processes and their relationshipto the French criminal justice system has been thesubject of several of his feature-length documentaries(including most recently, 12 jours (2017)).

By the end of 1970s, Depardon was disillusionedwith the world of corporate photojournalism, and his1979 book, Notes, marked a significant shift in hisvisual style from observational or journalistic detach-ment to a more open, subjective and autobiographicalapproach. San Clemente tests the authenticity of thistransformation: its subject matter and the act of film-ing the patients accentuates the tension between thedesire to frame and control, and the pursuit ofa looser and more tentative method. Unlike stillphotography, film increasingly enabled Depardon toarticulate an experience of reality that was free to

10 D. O’RAWE

follow reactions, promptings, and intuitions in thelanguage of long takes, and handheld cinematographywhere the framing is careful but not necessarily pre-cise, and more available to coincidence and uncer-tainty. Throughout San Clemente, the soundtrack’suncanny assortment of ambient sounds (especially,radio music), noise (talk, footsteps, squeakingdoors) and silence supplements the film’s images offidgeting figures walking aimlessly in circles, pacingup and down corridors, dancing monotonously, orjust sitting in silence, motionless. At key moments inthe film, however, both Depardon and Ristelhueberbecome involved in the action (in the very literalsense of this word), especially when individualpatients ask them random, unexpected questions ortry to take possession of the camera or microphone(Figure 5). From the outset the film acknowledges itsavailability to the complexities of the relationshipbetween the filmmakers and the patients and staff atthe hospital: the pre-title sequence culminates witha doctor telling the filmmakers not to entera particular ward, reprimanding them: “Shameon you!”.

Although he has tended to align his documentarystyle with the American “direct cinema” tradition ratherthan cinéma vérité, comparisons withWiseman’s work—especially in relation to their shared interest in psychia-tric and judicio-legal institutions—are inevitable if notalways illuminating, especially in relation to questions ofaesthetic technique (see, e.g. Jean 2009, 18–19). Halfwaythrough San Clemente there is a sequence, for example,that illustrates some of the distinctive characteristics ofDepardon’s observational method. The sequence inquestion lasts just over four minutes. It is a single hand-held plan-séquence comprising both moving and static

images. Opening with a shot of a mounted televisionbroadcasting a “live” Catholic mass, the camera tiltsdown to frame a small, hunched elderly woman standingslightly behind an adjacent doorway, holding a rag-dollin her arm. The sound of the television resonates loudlyas the woman stares back into the room, and at nothingin particular. Two nurses pass her and walk throughanother double-door. She watches them and follows fora couple of steps, stops and turns back before walking outof the shot as Depardon’s camera turns and tilts backupwards at the television again. Continuing on its travels,the camera then veers left and enters a small adjoiningward, where a woman can be seen sitting alone on a bed,languidly combing her hair. The camera dollies back,framing in medium shot the woman holding the rag-doll, with the sound of the choir now singing the Sanctusemanating loudly from the television set. The camerapans left and ventures into a larger recreation areawhere several women patients are sitting quietly onchairs before panning right and into a busy office (where-upon Depardon and Ristelhueber are shooed away byone of the nurses). Backed into the sitting area again,there follows a circular panning shot, before the film-makers are approached by a woman with a broom, whogestures angrily at the camera and shouts, “Stop that!”(Figure 6). She forces the broom at the camera lens butwithdraws when a nurse appears off-screen, joking thatthis woman is just “attention-seeking”. The camera fol-lows the nurse through another double-door intoa men’s recreational area, before cutting to the nextsequence.

On the one hand, Depardon’s preferred plan-séquence structure seems to militate against imposinga singular perspective by allowing the camera tohappen upon fragments of the real. The spontaneous

Figure 5. San Clemente (Raymond Depardon & Sophie Ristelhueber, 1980): Dario, one of the patients at the hospital, talks withRistelhueber.

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 11

interaction with patients and their families, as well asthe medical staff, suggests compassionate curiosity,openness and a desire to respect the other and theparticularity of their experience and voice. On theother hand, as David Forgacs has argued: “the film’svoyeuristic passages, those in which the patients aremerely observed and do not speak, or their voicescannot be heard, tend to present their otherness asa fixed and inexplicable condition” (Forgacs 2016,243). While Basaglia was supportive of Depardon’sdocumentary work on the manicomi, this was not—asthe film shows—necessarily the case for everyoneinvolved. Perhaps, it might be argued that SanClemente is as much about the problem of filmingpsychiatric subjects, as it is about the condition of theasylum itself, exploring how its own seemingly inno-cent observational style actually conspires in conceal-ing the filmmakers’ intrusive and voyeuristic motives.It may even be more instructive to consider SanClemente as one component in a larger series—orstory—of related works that should include the man-icomi photography books and the short film,Contacts, in which Depardon himself subsequentlyruminates frankly on the morality of photographingmental illness and human suffering. The problemremains, of course, that a criticism is not invalidjust because the filmmaker pre-empts or even subse-quently agrees with it.

Every little thing: institution without walls

Just as the Basaglias had taken issue with Laing overhis withdrawal from the political fray, there were

those who felt that the ideology of PsichiatriaDemocratica was itself predicated on a simplisticallyoppositional and deterministic concept of society andthe meaning of mental illness within that context.Félix Guattari, for example, while broadly supportiveof the Basaglias (and Laing too, especially in hiswritings on schizophrenia), argued for a more com-plex, nuanced, rhizomatic understanding of theseissues: “Political causality does not completely governthe causality of madness. It is perhaps, conversely, inan unconscious signifying assemblage that madnessdwells, and which predetermines the structural fieldin which political options, drives, and revolutionaryinhibitions are deployed, beside and beyond socialand economic determinisms” (Guattari 1996, 44).For Guattari, the supposedly rational, technocraticbasis of traditional psychiatric treatments and psy-choanalytical therapies overlooks the full array ofinfluences and socio-economic investments that arecontinually shaping and reshaping subjectivity: thesetreatments and therapies belong to a psycho-politicalmodel of control in which the relationship betweenmodernity and schizophrenia, for example, is less oneof an illness in need of a cure than a cure in need ofan illness. In his writings on schizo-analysis—parti-cularly those co-authored with Gilles Deleuze—Guattari elaborated the theoretical and clinical tenetsof this version of institutional psychotherapy (IP).For Guattari, the task of schizo-analysis is to subvertthe hegemony of the “oedipal paradigm”, attendinginstead to the contradictions of subjectivity, and theendlessly productive, deterritorializing, ineffableworkings of desire, or as he and Deleuze memorably

Figure 6. San Clemente (Raymond Depardon & Sophie Ristelhueber, 1980): A plan-séquence is abruptly interrupted by anindignant patient.

12 D. O’RAWE

elaborated in their Capitalisme et schizophrénie:L’anti-Œdipe (1972): it involves “learning whata subject’s desiring-machines are, how they work,with what syntheses, what bursts of energy in themachines, what constituent misfires, with whatflows, what chains, and what becomings in eachcase” (Guattari 1996, 92).

Although Guattari’s concept of schizo-analysis wasinitially derived from his involvement with Lacan, itsevolution was also a direct product of both his rela-tionship with Deleuze, and his long career asa psychotherapist at the La Borde Clinic. Establishedin 1953 by Jean Oury (himself a former student andcolleague of Lacan), La Borde was an extension of thehospital at Saint-Alban and was similarly associatedwith institutional psychotherapy, offering holistic,heterogeneous alternatives to mainstream medicalpsychiatry in France (see, Reggio and Novello 2007,32–45). Although the Groupe de Travail dePsychologic et de Sociologie Institutionnelles wasn’tformally constituted until 1960, and the theories andpractices of institutional psychotherapy had alreadybeen inaugurated in the 1930s by people such as PaulBalvet, Henri Ey, and Georges Daumézon, it is chieflyidentified with the remarkable career of FrançoisTosquelles, who arrived at Saint-Alban’s in 1941,carrying Lacanʼs doctoral thesis (De la Psychose:Paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité(1932)) amongst his few hurriedly packed posses-sions. A (Catalan) refugee from Franco’s Spain,Tosquelles’ revolutionary socialist beliefs and politicalactivism were integral to his approach to psychiatry,and his rejection of a system in which psychoticpatients were subjected to hospitalisation and crudecombinations of tranquilisation, insulin injections,and electric shocks. Tosquelles’ work attracted theattention of other left-wing psychiatrists, resistanceactivists, and artists, including Lucien Bonnafé,Horace Torrubia, Hélène Chaigneau, Roger Gentis,Jean Ayme, Ginette Michaud, and Franz Fanon—whocompleted a residency at Saint-Alban in 1951, andpublished a paper with Tosquelles in 1954. Saint-Alban was also a formative influence on Oury, whoenvisaged La Borde as an asylum without walls,embodying the collective, anti-hierarchical ethos ofinstitutional psychotherapy.1

Unlike Psichiatria Democratica and the PhiladelphiaAssociation, Tosquelles, Oury, and Guattari did notbelieve in closing the asylums per se., anymore thanthey were interested in campaigning for reforms insidethe institution of French psychiatry. Instead, theysought to augment prevailing psychiatric treatmentswith practices derived from psychoanalysis, sociology,political theory, and the arts. Viewing alienation asalways both psychological and sociological, they refusedto recognize disciplinary boundaries, aiming at all timesto create an environment—or “setting”—that was

institutional but free from the forms of regulatory con-straint and power relations evident in typical psychiatrichospitals. At La Borde—a former chateau surroundedby forty hectares of woodland, meadow, and ponds—there were no uniforms to distinguish staff frompatients, with staff regularly allocated duties outsidetheir respective spheres of medical, clerical or technicalexpertise. Everyone, resident or visitor, participated intwice-daily meetings, at which they were fully involvedin various role-playing games and group activities. LikeBasaglia and Laing, the institutional psychotherapistswere not opposed to psychopharmacological interven-tion as part of a wider treatment, which would alsoinclude regular one-to-one psychoanalytical sessions,occupational ergo-therapy and paid manual andadministrative work. “Le club” was also an integralpart of the therapeutic programme at La Borde; runprimarily by the patients, it was responsible for organis-ing recreational activities, such as concerts, the clinicnewsletter (La Borde Éclair), parties, and the play (per-formed on 15th August every year) (Figure 7). Thevariety and diversity of therapies and activities takingplace at La Borde underpinned a core element of itslarger therapeutic objective—namely, the creation of anenvironment conducive to collective transference or“transversiality”, as Guattari began calling it in themid-1960s. In other words, typical hierarchies, distinc-tions, and boundaries within the clinic were constantlybeing dismantled or reconfigured to ensure that theobject of transference is not simply the individual psy-chiatrist or therapist but the group, where the flow andcirculation of transference is unrestricted and deter-mined by both individual and collective responses,including those of the medical staff. It was this particu-lar community that Nicolas Philibert chose to visit inthe summer of 1995, ostensibly to make a film aroundthe various preparations and rehearsals for that year’splay, Opérette—an absurdist social satire by WitoldGombrowicz.

In many respects, La Borde would seem an idealenvironment for Philibert to explore: his films aretypically preoccupied with questions of how we con-nect and communicate meaningfully with oneanother, and how the differences between us can beovercome by little more than simple, unspectaculargestures of kindness, humour, sympathy, and mutualrespect. Although Philibert and Depardon arrived atdocumentary filmmaking from very different back-grounds, their observational styles are not entirelydissimilar, with Philibert also interested in the prac-tice of everyday life as seen through its institutions(schools, theatres, museums, Radio France, etc.). Hisfilms are also typically devoid of voice-over commen-tary or structured interviews, and are characterised bycarefully framed long takes, edited to ensure thatnothing jars or distracts the audience; even an occa-sional cutaway to a close shot of an object or detail,

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 13

or longer shots involving some feature of the land-scape, or just to nothing in particular, are quietlywoven into the film’s deceptively simple fabric.

Philibert also prefers not to be constrained by anoverly detailed script or set production plan, envi-saging the process of filmmaking as involving thediscovery of a film that is already there rather thanproducing a predetermined version of reality,claiming: “I make my documentaries froma position of ignorance and curiosity […] I don’tneed a map; I don’t need to know the final destina-tion […] the film is an invitation” (Philibert 2012).While this open approach might even chime withthe spirit of institutional psychotherapy’s notion of“non-deductive ontology”, Philibert holds the viewthat the only way to get inside the reality of the LaBorde community is by staying outside its history,approaching it as a stranger and not under the spellof its personalities or politics: “the less I know, thefreer I am” (Philibert 2005)

La Borde has been the subject of various films,most notably Igor Barrère’s La Borde ou le droit à lafolie/La Borde, or the Right to be Mad (1977,63 mins.), a television documentary that culminatesin extensive interviews with Oury and Guattari, andMin Tanaka à la Borde/Min Tanaka at La Borde(Joséphine Guattari and François Pain, 1986,25mins.)—an insider’s view of how visiting avant-garde artists like Tanaka contribute to life at LaBorde.2 Unlike these films, Every Little Thing takesits bearings from an alternative poetics of filmmak-ing, one that embraces the notion of the observationaldocumentary as being primarily an expressive formconcerned with the possibility of meaning rather thanthe inevitability of its production. In other words,Every Little Thing is less an authoritative critique,commentary or exposition on a particular social

topic—i.e. La Borde and the practice of radical psy-chiatry in France—than it is an exploration of whatthe language of film can and cannot articulate. Thispoint can be illustrated by looking at a particularsegment from mid-way through the film.

After showing the actors outside rehearsing somecomplex singing arrangements for the play, the filmcuts to a static close-up of someone wearing anAfrican tribal mask, which then falls or “slips” toreveal Michel’s face and enigmatic smile. After a fewsilent seconds, the film cuts (rather than tracks) toa full shot of Michel still sitting on his bed, holdingthe mask on his lap. The camera lingers again as heshuffles slightly, appears to start moving but remainswhere he is. This sequence is followed by two morestatic full shots: the first frames Claude sitting alonein a kitchen, staring at the floor and rubbing hisforehead in an agitated way; the second, a mediumclose shot of another man, this time lying on his bed,quietly upset and gazing forlornly into Philibert’scamera. There then follows a longer sequence invol-ving coffee and tea being poured and distributedamongst various people, at one of the club gatherings.This busy scene comprises more conventional hand-held, observational cinematography, especially in howit configures the various facial close-ups as peoplereact to—and interact with—Sophie as she sketchesa portrait of one of the group (Figure 8). Thissequence is interrupted as the film then cuts toClaude again, this time getting his beard trimmed.Claude’s exchanges with the young member of staffwho has volunteered to be his “barber” are comical asthey tease one another, with Claude complaining, andeven pretending to fall asleep at one point. The seg-ment then cuts back to the art club, as Sophie showsoff her sketch and responds to comments and sugges-tions, before this segment concludes by returning

Figure 7. Every Little Thing/La Moindre des choses (Nicolas Philibert, 1996): An extreme close-up of some La Borde laundry—theinvolvement of everyone in completing allocated housekeeping tasks and activities—la moindre des choses—is essential to thewell-being of community.

14 D. O’RAWE

outside again, as two of the actors are shown testingthe sound effects for the play (as produced by gentlybeating a large sheet of metal hanging from a tree).

Like other segments in the film, this one begins andends with scenes of rehearsal and preparations for theplay, and contains within it ample evidence ofPhilibert’s distinctive visual style and filmic sensibility.Every Little Thing culminates with the performance ofOpérette and in a curious way the play—this play—frames the entire film, and underwrites its mise enscène of flux and ambiguity. The surreal sequenceinvolving Michel with the tribal mask emphasises thispoint—his gestures inviting the audience to ask itselfwho is performing to whom? What is behind themask? What is real and what is reflected? Who ishappy and who is sad, sick or well, rational or notrational? The preponderance of carefully composedstatic shots adds to the sense of theatricality and arti-fice, especially towards the end of this particular

segment after Claude’s beard has finally been trimmedand both men are framed in the reflection of a largemirror, their identities doubled and duplicated by thesame image within an image (Figure 9). Withoutabandoning a coherent narrative structure or subvert-ing the broad conventions of the observational mode,Every Little Thing poses questions at every turn, keepsmeaning (and our judgement) in a state of play byrefusing to settle into some conventionally realistic—and therefore, moralistic—homage to the La BordeClinic.

In Warrendale, Asylum, and San Clemente, the doc-umentary depiction of mental illness and its treatmentstends to be mediated by the filmmakers’ sympathytowards a particular therapeutic or political intervention,whether that be associated with a charismatic figure suchas John Brown or R.D. Laing, or on-going struggles toreform a recalcitrantly inhumane mental health caresystem (as in the case of Psichiatria Democratica).

Figure 8. Every Little Thing/La Moindre des choses (Nicolas Philibert, 1996): Sophie drawing a portrait in “le club”, where creativeexpression is a collective experience.

Figure 9. Every Little Thing/La Moindre des choses (Nicolas Philibert, 1996): A double act—Claude and his “barber” assess hisnewly trimmed beard.

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 15

Given this supportive relationship to the ostensible sub-ject of their films, these documentaries inevitably includescenes of psychotic and distraught behaviour, scenesnecessary in drawing attention to the urgency of thepsychiatric and social issues at stake. Although EveryLittle Thing is set in an alternative psychiatric commu-nity and also conforms to an observational aesthetic, itdoes not ostensibly offer itself as a vehicle for the pro-motion of institutional psychotherapy, or the work ofJean Oury and the legacy of Félix Guattari; and while itshows human suffering at times, it does not featureinstances of extreme emotional and physical behaviour.Furthermore, the audience is never certain whether thefilm is chiefly a documentary about the psychiatric com-munity residing at La Borde, or about a group of actors,musicians, artists, visitors, friends preparing their rolesfor the performance of a relatively obscure, not to saysurreal, play. In avoiding the familiar stereotypes andnarrative strategies that typically characterise documen-taries about mental illness, the individuals who featurein Philibert’s film are not fixed to an identity, or situated—inadvertently or otherwise—by the filmmaker asbeing on the right or wrong side of madness. In avoidingthe trap of making mental illness the subject, the film’scinematographic forms and structures complicateassumed social and psychological differences betweenpeople. In so doing, Every Little Thing reminds its audi-ence that distinctions between madness and sanity, likethose between fiction and documentary, are the stuff ofcontingency not necessity.

Notes

1. On the origins and influence of InstitutionalPsychotherapy in France, see Robcis (2016).

2. Barrère was a medical doctor and television jour-nalist (known largely through his work in the 1960son ORFT’s current affairs series, Cinq Colonnes à laune) and his 1977 documentary on La Borde wasinspired by the publication of Polack and Sivadon’sLa Borde ou le Droit à la folie (1976). François Painworked closely with Guattari and has producedvarious film and visual art works inspired byschizo-analysis. See also, Guattari’s autobiographi-cal I, Little Asylum (2014). Interestingly, Djemaï’smore recent film, À peine ombre/Out of theShadows (2012) is less concerned with the diversityof activities and therapies at La Borde, andalthough it features an interview with Oury (whodied in 2014), it tends to eschew an idyllic depic-tion of the clinic and its environs.

Notes on contributor

Des O’Rawe is a senior lecturer in Film Studies at Queen’sUniversity Belfast, where he is also a Research Fellow at theMitchell Institute for Conflict Transformation and SocialJustice. He is particularly interested in interdisciplinaryapproaches to the study of film and visual culture. His

recent publications include: Regarding the Real: Cinema,Documentary, and the Visual Arts (Manchester UniversityPress, 2016), and (with Mark Phelan) Post-ConflictPerformance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Des O’Rawe http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9017-2671

References

Artkino: societa cooperativa di distribuzione cinematogra-fica. 1977. Correspondence to R.D. Laing. 8 February.R. D. Laing Collection, B199/1. University of Glasgow.http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/manuscripts/search/detail_c.cfm?ID=72935.

Blaine, A., S. Feldman, and P. Hardcourt. 2002. “AllanKing Plus Three: An Interview.” In In Allan King:Filmmaker, edited by S. Feldman, 81–98. Toronto:Toronto International Film Festival. Google Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Allan+King%3A+Filmmaker%2C+edited+by+Seth+Feldman&btnG=

Depardon, R. 1984. San Clemente. Ex. cat. Paris: Centrenational de la photographie.

Depardon, R. 2014.Manicomio: Secluded Madness. Göttingen:Steidl. Google Books https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Manicomio.html?id=UmNZLwEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Druick, Z. 2010. Allan King’s A Married Couple. Toronto:University of Toronto Press. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0%2C5&cites=10764545092298493510&scipsc=&q=Druick%2C+Zo%C3%AB.+2010.+Allan+King%E2%80%99s+A+Married+Couple&btnG=

Foot, J. 2015. The Man Who Closed the Asylums: FrancoBasaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care.London: Verso. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=john+foot+man+who+closed+the+asylums&btnG=

Forgacs, D. 2016. Italy’s Margins: Social Exclusion andNation Formation since 1861. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Forgacs+Italy%E2%80%99s+Margins%3A+&btnG=

Fuller, S. 2012. “Samuel Fuller: Survivor: Interview withTom Ryan [1980].” In Samuel Fuller: Interviews, editedby G. Peary, 73–84. Jackson: University of MississippiPress. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Samuel+Fuller%3A+Interviews%2C+edited+by+Gerald+Peary&btnG=

Grimshaw, A., and A. Ravetz. 2009. Observational Cinema:Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life.Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Google Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Grimshaw%2C+Anna+and+Amanda+Ravetz.+2009.+Observational+Cinema&btnG=

16 D. O’RAWE

Guattari, E. 2014. I, Little Asylum. Trans. E. C. Belli.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/i-little-asylum

Guattari, F. 1996. The Guattari Reader. Ed. Gary Genosko.Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Guattari%2C+F%C3%A9lix.+1996.+The+Guattari+Reader&btnG=

Hogarth, D. 2002. Documentary Television in Canada:From National Public Service to Global Marketplace.Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. GoogleScholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_s d t = 0%2C5&q=Hog a r t h%2C+Da v i d . + 2 0 0 2 .+Documentary+Television+&btnG=

Jean, M. 2009. “Depardon, Wiseman… La meilleure façondecapter.” 24 Images 143 (September): 18–19. URIhttps://id.erudit.org/iderudit/25175ac

Laing, R. D. 1985. Wisdom, Madness, and Folly: The Makingof a Psychiatrist: 1927–57. London: Macmillan. GoogleScholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Wisdom%2C%20Madness%20and%20Folly%2C%20the%20Making%20of%20a%20Psychiatrist&author=R.D..%20Laing&publication_year=1985

McElhaney, J. 2009. Albert Maysles. Champaign: UniversityIllinois Press. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=McElhaney%2C+Joe.+2009.+Albert+Maysles&btnG=

Nelson, B. 1972. “Afterword: A Medium with A Message.”In Laing and Anti-Psychiatry, edited by R. Boyers andR. Orrill, 207–301. Penguin: Harmondsworth. GoogleScholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en≈sdt=0%2C5&q=Laing+and+Anti-Psychiatry%2C+edited+by+Robert+Boyers+and+Robert+Orrill&btnG=

Philibert, N. February 5, 2005. “You Can Make a GreatFilm with a Very Tiny Subject.” Interview with GeoffAndrew. NFT. https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/interviews/nicolas-philibert-interview

Philibert, N. June 28, 2012. “I Have No Idea What My Filmsare About.” Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jun/28/nicolas-philibert-what-my-films-are-about

Polack, J.-C., and D. Sivadon. 1976. La Borde Ou Le DroitÀ La Folie. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Google Scholar https://

scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en≈sdt=0%2C5&q=Polack%2C+Jean-Claude+and+Danielle+Sivadon.+1976.+La+Borde+&btnG=

Reggio, D., and M. Novello. 2007. “The Hospital Is Ill: AnInterview with Jean Oury.” Radical Philosophy 143(May/June): 32–45. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en≈sdt=0%2C5&q=David+and+Mauricio+Novello+hospital+is+ill&btnG=

Robcis, C. 2016. “François Tosquelles and the PsychiatricRevolution in Postwar France.” Constellations 23 (2):212–222. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12223.

Robinson, P. 1970. Correspondence to R.D. Laing, 15 Dec.R. D. Laing Collection, L238/98. University of Glasgow.http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/manuscripts/search/detail_c.cfm?ID=80013.

Rothman, W. 2004. The “I” of Camera: Essays in FilmCriticism, History, and Aesthetics. Rev. ed. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en≈sdt=0%2C5&q=Rothman%2C+William.+2004.+The+%E2%80%9CI%E2%80%9D+of+Camera&btnG=

Silverstein, N. 1973. “Two R.D. Laing Movies: Wednesday’sChild and Asylum.” Film Quarterly Review ofWednesday’s Child [Family Life] by Ken Loach andAsylum by Peter Robinson 26 (4): 2–9. doi:10.2307/1211481.

Smith, H., and T. Young. 1972. “Asylum.” Review ofAsylum, by Peter Robinson The Village Voice 28September 58–59.

Stastny, P. 1998. “From Exploitation to Self-Reflection:Representing Persons with Psychiatric Disabilities inDocumentary Film.” Literature and Medicine 17 (1):68–90. doi:10.1353/lm.1998.0008.

Szasz, T. 2009. Anti-Psychiatry: Quackery Squared.Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Google Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en≈sdt=0,5&q=Szasz,+Thomas+antipsychiatry+quackery

Warrendale Press Pack. 1967. Toronto: Allan KingAssociates. Google https://www.nyu.edu/projects/wke/press/warrendale/warrendale.pdf

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 17