DEVIANCE, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND RELIGION
The project presented here is an interdisciplinary collective research project combining Axe 2 of the Pôle de recherches de la Sigmund Freud Université- SFU with those of the Institut Supérieur d’Etudes des Religions et de laïcité- ISERL of the Université Lumière Lyon 2, in partnership with and with the support of Labex COMOD-Constitution de la Modernité, Raison, politique, Religion.
Professionals working in their professional capacity as doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, jurists, historians and anthropologists will be called upon to link deviance, psychopathology and religion. The term “deviance” will be used to designate the field of social life studied by Howard Becker (1985), notably in his now emblematic Outsiders book. For H. Becker uses the term “deviance” to designate and qualify as “deviant” behavior “that transgresses the norms accepted by a particular social group or institution”.
In this sense, the approaches adopted, the themes chosen, the subjects and case studies selected, as well as the way in which the term “deviance” is used, guide the methodological choices that will be mobilized in line with the respective professions and disciplinary fields concerned. The focus will be on deviant behaviors involving “acts sanctioned by the law and the legal-police system”, such as drug use, but also mental illness, alcoholism and, more generally, additions of various kinds. As far as our common concerns and interests are concerned, the study of different modalities of “deviance”, it will be necessary to consider that the definitions of law enforcement and justice “are only socially constituted definitions among others” and therefore experiences gathered in the different fields of research on the subject, the different social settings and care structures (public and private), bearing in mind that all definitions of situations of deviance deserve equal and thorough attention.
Starting from the presupposition that definitions of the term deviance, commonly established by forces of law and order, “are only socially constituted definitions among others”, we will consider, based on experiences gathered on this subject in our respective research fields, in different social settings and in different care structures (public and private), that the study of different modalities and situations of deviance deserves equal and in-depth attention within the framework of the proposed research.
As such, at the heart of this project’s proposals lies a dual intention. Namely, the ambition to :
- to contribute to studies and research on the relationship between deviance and delinquency as it relates to mental health, by focusing on medical and care practices in areas often ignored by criminologists, jurists and politicians.
- to go beyond simple observations and case studies of a restricted socio-cultural universe marked by migration, precariousness and delinquency/criminality, often located in so-called “sensitive” neighborhoods.
Our project has led us to propose that we should not remain confined to an imaginary world in which immigrants and their descendants are associated with deviance and, consequently, criminality. This implies a particular attention and action to reject the idea that the combination of these factors can be explained by origin, culture or religion (notably Islam in the French case). This means rejecting the presupposition that deviance is merely a symptom whose explanatory elements or causality are to be found in each individual’s ethno-geographical origin.
Bearing in mind that social norms define the situations and modes of behavior associated with them, and by which certain actions are presented as being accepted (as being “right”) and others are forbidden (as being “wrong”), it will be a question of apprehending them without adopting an over-representation of immigration, particularly post-colonial deviance and/or delinquency. In this way, at the heart of the project we are presenting is the recognition that “all social groups institute norms and strive to ensure that they are respected, [at least] at certain times and in certain circumstances” (Cf. Becker, p. 25), thus referring to what is “the norm” and what is “outside the norm”. We need to be alert to the risks of stigmatization, to establish the relevance and criteria of case study selectivity, and to keep a critical mind when confronted with the amalgams often revealed in the field.
