Beyond Symptom Supression:
Psychoanalytic Perspectives and Alternative Approaches to Psychosis at Le 388
Above is a booklet born from an unpublished social work research paper titled, "Beyond Symptom Suppression: Psychoanalytic Perspectives and Alternative Approaches to Psychosis at Le 388.” My academic inquiry examines, Le 388 in Québec - an outpatient clinic that provides an innovative model for the treatment of psychosis, including interventions that prioritize humanization and subjectivity over symptom suppression. The center is rooted in psychoanalysis, interpreting symptoms as meaningful expressions of psychic distress and underscores the importance of addressing the dynamic needs of individuals.
The visual project is a visual-text booklet that weaves together interview dialogue and personal imagery into a poetic archive, offering an alternative way into this conversation. The textual source is the 2019 interview with the Lacanian founders of Le388 by Chris Vanderwees. Given their expertise, it felt best to present their work directly. Their interview has been disrupted visually and structurally, presenting only highlighted key statements from the text using a process of highlighting and erasure. The key perspectives are on psychotic subjectivity and symptoms as meaningful information rather then symptoms to only be suppressed. You can read this perspective in the pages. Visually, I draw on footage from a 2014 journey I took with my brother (who suffers from schizophrenia) across the country, searching for treatment facilities for psychosis. I’ve extracted screenshots (fragments of visual memory) and the images have been woven into the text. There are cut-outs within the images that mirror the opposite text, revealing patterns. I wanted to represent the sensations of erasure, accounting for those disappeared by our systems as well as the recent loss of Le 388 (closed March 2025). Together, the reworked text and images form a poetic, layered digital booklet. While working on this academic research eleven years later, my sibling (now living in a nursing home in Ohio) was front of my mind. This visual project became an attempt to merge time and space, while representing the key perspectives of Le 388.