par Ehrenberg, Alain;Marquis, Nicolas 
Référence Education, Parenting, and Mental Health Care in Europe: The Contradictions of Building Autonomous Individuals, Taylor and Francis, page (31-48)
Publication Publié, 2024-01
Référence Education, Parenting, and Mental Health Care in Europe: The Contradictions of Building Autonomous Individuals, Taylor and Francis, page (31-48)
Publication Publié, 2024-01
Partie d'ouvrage collectif
| Résumé : | This chapter proposes a socio-historical perspective to controversies about conceptions of and approaches to child development, considering the global moral context of transformations of individualism, to understand what they are about. The first part of the chapter proposes an analytical framework to explore the relationships between mental health, neurosciences, autonomy, and individualism. It shows how collective representations regarding these notions have changed in France since the Second World War and proposes the idea that mental health can be approached as an ensemble of practices to regulate the tensions of socialization in a society permeated by “collective representations” of autonomy. The second part applies this framework to the evolving conceptions of childhood in the same French context. The goal is to put changes in the ways of thinking about and acting with “problem children”, whose issues are today expressed in terms of mental health, into perspective. It shows that the two great sources of mental health representations and practices - psychoanalysis and cognitive (neuro)science - although opposing in theory, are, from a sociological perspective, complementary ways of understanding and supporting children in a context where autonomy has become a normative expectation. |
