Ode to Le 388

Artist Book.
An archival project developed through artistic research, clinical research, found interview text, archival documentary photography, and erasure techniques. The work explores community psychiatry, history, disappearance, mourning, the ethics of listening, and political imagination. An attempt to merge time and space. A way to place the person I think of within the walls and words of the founders. A way to return subjectivity to the person in my mind.

Accompanying essay appearing summer 2026 in The European Journal of Psychoanalysis
Two Spaces, Two Affected Worlds | Vol. 13, No. 2 (2026)

 

  • This artist book weaves together interview dialogue and personal documentary imagery into a poetic archive. The textual source is a 2019 interview with the Lacanian founders of Le 388 by Chris Vanderwees. Le 388 was an outpatient clinic in Québec that developed a psychoanalytic approach to psychosis, prioritizing humanization and subjectivity over symptom suppression (made in the lineage of Institutional Psychotherapy).

    The interview has been formally reworked through a process of highlighting and erasure (inspired by collaborator Eliza Lu Doyle), leaving only selected statements from the founders. Interwoven throughout are images drawn from unused documentary footage filmed during a 2014 journey across the United States with my brother as we searched for alternative treatment facilities for psychosis. Extracted as fragments of visual memory, the screenshots merge with the altered text through cut-outs, layering, and visual interruption. The project became an attempt to collapse time and space; to bring a decade-old search into conversation with the closure of Le 388 in March 2025. The gestures of erasure throughout the publication reflect both institutional disappearance and the fragile persistence of memory.

    Materials: An exported 2019 interview with Le 388 co-founders Willy Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, and Lucie Cantin, conducted by Chris Vanderwees (Treating Psychosis in Québec, Museum of Dreams); 2014 documentary footage (Andrea Sisson and Pete Ohs); digital erasure and annotation

  • This project developed from research into psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches to psychosis, with particular attention to Le 388, a Québec clinic whose treatment model emphasized subjectivity, dreams, language, creative expression, and sustained listening. My inquiry asks how underlying philosophies of care shape the lives of those experiencing psychosis, and how contemporary systems often privilege symptom suppression, categorization, and standardization over human relationship.

    The accompanying literature review traces the history of psychiatric institutionalization and deinstitutionalization, critiques the dominance of pharmacological treatment, and examines the contributions of Institutional Psychotherapy, R.D. Laing, Danielle Knafo, GIFRIC, and the founders of Le 388. Together, these perspectives understand psychosis not simply as pathology, but as a meaningful mode of psychic expression requiring relational, creative, and humanistic forms of care. Ultimately, this research argues for renewed attention to psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches to psychosis while proposing artistic practice as a complementary mode of research capable of expanding contemporary conversations about care, institutional life, and documentary representation.

    Research paper available upon request.

    Research Advisor: Daniel Gardner, Ph.D. (Hunter College School of Social Work)

    Additional Consultation: Christopher Chamberlin (Lacanian Psychoanalyst; Group for Independent Formation)

    Research areas: Le 388, GIFRIC, Institutional Psychotherapy, La Borde, Saint-Alban, François Tosquelles, Jean Oury, Félix Guattari, Frantz Fanon, R.D. Laing, Danielle Knafo, Joanna Moncrieff, psychoanalytic approaches to psychosis.