18 November 2023

09:35 – 10:20

Amphithéâtre Faure

Jacques Antoine Malarewicz

After studying medicine and specializing in psychiatry, Jacques Antoine Malarewicz became head of department at a clinic specializing in the care of adolescents. Alongside his work as a psychotherapist in private practice, he is also a trainer and supervisor for companies, consultants and coaches. He is the author of numerous books on Ericksonian hypnosis, the systemic approach, family and couple therapy, and large-scale systems intervention. His latest book, “La folie dans tous ses états”, was published by Humensciences in May 2022.

Conference: Use or abuse of the notion of energy in psychotherapy?

Psychiatry, as a medical discipline, was born in the 19th century. Since the mind was, to all appearances, the object of movements that needed to be described and understood, it was necessary to give a name to this primum movens that produced what were long called intermittences of the heart or soul. At a time when physics was preoccupied with the emergence of electro-magnetism and thermodynamics, the question of energy came to the fore. However, many other notions had already been proposed. Between Descartes’ imagination, Spinoza’s conatus and, closer to home, all the elaborations concerning willpower, force and the élan vital dear to Henri Bergson, vitalism, which has its origins in the 18th century, tends to re-emerge under the mask of a vision that claims to be spiritual, voluntarily anti-materialist and holistic of psychic life. Today, however, it is energy that is most often invoked, particularly in most psychotherapy practices. Although it is never precisely defined — not surprisingly — this energy should be positive and solution-oriented. But is it a means or an end, how can we make it spontaneously operational, and what about its origin and the link between body and mind?