I, Little Asylum

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Founded in 1951 and renowned in the world of psychiatry, the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde sought to break with the traditional internment of the mentally ill and to have them participate in the material organization of collective life. The clinic owed much of its approach to psychoanalyst and philosopher Félix Guattari, who was its codirector with Jean Oury until 1992. In this lyrical chronicle of a childhood, Félix Guattari's daughter Emmanuelle Guattari offers a series of impressionistic vignettes drawn from her own experiences at La Borde, a castle in the middle of a spacious park: a place not of confinement but of imagination and play. Book jacket