The Odd and the Institution: A Letter to the Stranger of Camus

by | Vol 28 (1/2) 2010

In a letter addressed to Meursault, the stranger in Albert Camus’ novel of the same name, we try to grasp the significance an institution can have for the human being. For instance in the novel it is clear that Meursault is content in his position of the accused. Perhaps the institution functions as a protective shield, or acquires a translating or mediating role between actuality and history, between guilt and anxiety, between the familiar and the strange.

Related articles

  • Odd and Even

    This article is a testimony to the work of an animation workshop over several years within an institution for delinquent girls. Over the course of a series of trials, both with the group of girls and with the institution, a particular position distinguished itself that allowed the subject to come into existence. It assumes, on behalf of the animator, an involvement both at the level of the transference and at the level of theory. As regards theory, the transference opens…

  • Coping with Aggression within an Institution

    Physical aggression incidents directly confront care workers with the limits of their capacity "to be good" to the patient. The severity of these incidents is not determined by the measurable and objective facts but depends upon the subjective experience of the victim. Coping with aggression within the context of an institution means giving team members enough room to verbalize this subjective experience in order to make working with the patient possible again. With three clinical cases it is shown how…

  • An Open Letter in a Closed Envelope

    The author writes a long letter to a psychiatric patient with whom he has been corresponding for several years. The letter was written on the occasion of a Congress on chronicity as the central theme ("Psychoanalytic work with chronic patients, Gent, 16. April, 2008). It is primarily a personal letter covering some important themes in their conversations: time, the attitude towards psychiatry, life and death, the father and a woman. The author tries to describe their humane encounter and how…