Tosquelles: Healing Institutions

A landmark anthology of Francesc Tosquelles’s intellectual, clinical, and political writings, many available in English translation for the first time.

Often consigned to legend, the life of Francesc Tosquelles reads as an adventure story of clinical, political, and collective experimentation around healing institutions. Joining the Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole psychiatric hospital in Nazi-occupied France, Tosquelles invented what would become “institutional psychotherapy” with poets, film critics, photographers, and psychiatrists including Jean Oury, Agn?s Masson, Frantz Fanon, Tristan Tzara, and Paul ?luard.

This first anthology of Tosquelles’s writings shines a light on his forgotten history, from his engagement as a psychiatrist during the Spanish Civil War alongside anti-Franquist and anti-Stalinist communists, to his progressive return to Catalonia following his role in the “cultural revolution” of “institutional psychotherapy” in France. Through translations of texts never before available in English, Tosquelles’s powerful voice reminds us how important politicized relations to institutions are in our times of sick institutions, scapegoating of strangers, and globalized war.

Author: Joana Maso
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Semiotext(e)
Published: 05/12/2026
Series: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.54lbs
Size: 9.38h x 6.31w x 1.03d
ISBN: 9781635902556
Language: English