A lyrical account of a childhood spent in a castle disguised as a
psychiatric clinic, written by the daughter of Félix Guattari.
A moment later, Lacan is chattering with me, and giving me some crayons
to draw with.
--from I, Little Asylum
Founded in 1951 and renowned in the world of psychiatry, the
experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde sought to break with the
traditional internment of the mentally ill and to have them participate
in the material organization of collective life. The clinic owed much of
its approach to psychoanalyst and philosopher Félix Guattari, who was
its codirector with Jean Oury until 1992. In this lyrical chronicle of a
childhood at La Borde, Félix Guattari's daughter Emanuelle Guattari
offers a series of impressionistic vignettes drawn from her own
experiences.
As a child whose parents worked in the clinic, Emanuelle Guattari
("Manou") experienced La Borde--which is housed in a castle in the
middle of a spacious park--as a place not of confinement but of
imagination and play. She evokes a landscape that is surreal but also
mundane, describing the fat monkey named Boubou her father kept at the
clinic, interactions between the "La Borde kids" and the "Residents"
(aka, the "Insane," feared by the locals), the ever fascinating
rainbow-hued "shit pit" on the grounds, and prank-calls to the clinic
switchboard. And, of course, there is Félix Guattari himself, at the
dinner table, battling a rat, and in his daughter's dreams. Emmanuelle
Guattari's tale of childlike wonder offers a poetic counterpoint to the
writings of her father and his intellectual circle.
