François Tosquelles

Francesc Tosquelles (Reus, August 22, 1912 – Granges-sur-Lot, September 25, 1994), also known as François Tosquelles due to having lived in France for many years, was a Catalan psychiatrist.

Dr. Francesc Tosquelles Llauradó
Born	(1912-08-22)August 22, 1912 Reus, Catalonia, Kingdom of Spain
Died	September 25, 1994(1994-09-25) (aged 82) Granges-sur-Lot, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
Occupation	Psychiatrist
Employer	Institut Pere Mata
Political party	Workers and Peasants' Bloc POUM
Awards	Medalla al Trabajo President Macià (1994)

Life

The psychiatric hospital at Saint-Alban is now named François Tosquelles after him.

During the Spanish Civil War, Tosquelles fought on the Republican side for the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. During World War II, he was the doctor at the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole, Lozère, France.

He is credited as one of the creators of institutional psychotherapy, an influential movement in the second half of the 20th century. His 1948 doctoral thesis for the University of Paris was titled 'The Psychopathology of Lived Experience' - "Part gestalt psychology, part phenomenology, part neurobiology, part psychoanalysis, it revived the Hippocratic notion of the medic–philosopher – iatros philosophos."

After experiencing military occupations throughout his lifetime (German in France, Spanish in Catalonia, Francoist in Spain, and Stalinist in the Spanish communist parties), he concluded that "occupation" was not simply a historical reality but created a psychic structure in the individual, and that to achieve freedom, one must proceed by "disoccupation".

One of his students was the Martinican psychiatrist and later revolutionary activist Frantz Fanon, who used Tosquelles's techniques with some success in the mid-1950s while living in Blida, Algeria.

Bibliography

• De la personne au groupe: A propos des équipes de soin, 1995. Eres. ISBN 9782749219035, 2749219035.
• Éducation et psychothérapie institutionnelle, 1984. Matrice Éditions. ISBN 9782905642875, 2905642874.
• Hygiène mentale des éducateurs et leur efficacité, 1962. Éditions Hermann. ASIN B0BPCV5XN7.

See also

• Francois-Tosquelles Hospital Center (fr)

Further reading

• Faugeras, Patrick (2007). L'ombre portée de François Tosquelles (in French). Erès. ISBN 9782749207650.
• Francesc Tosquelles: Como una máquina de coser en un campo de trigo [Francesc Tosquelles: As a sewing machine in a wheat field] (in Spanish). Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Museo Reina Sofía y Arcadia. 2022. ISBN 978-84-8026-634-5.