Éthique du toucher en psychiatrie de l’enfant et de l’adolescent : dialectique entre théorie et pratique

Abstract

Because it is within the possibility of caring for others, touch is at the very basis of ethics. It is central to the work of touch professionals, especially when dealing with children and adolescents in the field of child psychiatry. Questions are raised daily, and post-coup work becomes necessary because of the ambivalence and confusion surrounding this sense. This article focuses on the practice of psychomotricians. Their experience is invaluable in establishing a therapeutic and ethical framework for achieving the right distance between carer and cared-for. Two clinical vignettes illustrate this practice regarding touch but not without first addressing the historical-medical-philosophical dimension of this sense. Psychomotricians draw on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, among others. Merleau-Ponty's thinking is based on touch, the sense of mediation between the surface and depth of being, but also on the paradigm of our relationship with the world, which is highlighted by the experience of touching–touched. It is only through rigorous elaboration and reflection that the use of touch in child psychiatry, whatever the pathological difficulties, can be therapeutic: containing and enveloping without embracing, exciting or coercing…