title: [Reflections on the importance and the role of the psychiatric hospital in contemporary psychiatry.].
abstract: The psychiatric hospital is extremely controversial and there is no absence of voices calling for its disappearance. The object of this work is to draw the readers' attention to the fact that the problem is more complex than it appears and that any radical solution would be impractical and undesirable. An historical overview allows a better understanding of how and why the institution has become what it is : a place that is both reprehensible and deplorable in many respects. Inversely, it is also a place of life and culture where important facets of human reality are expressed; a microcosm of all the currents of society. It is a place where marginality has a particular status, and where men and women live their lives with a set of services that would be difficult to replaced and morally unacceptable to suppress.
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Losson