I open the psychiatric camera
In a striking first work, Treize uses his writing shaped by poetry and the frontality of rap and slam scenes to reclaim his story and tell ten years of psychiatric violence. A very strong, disturbing personal story, in the hollow of which to think many others. It accounts for the structural brutality of the psychiatric institution and the power of psychiatrists. A powerful and liberating literary text, where orality and musicality serve a very political purpose and a rare word.
I spent ten years in psychiatric country, my twenties. Years during which I have my body stuffed with chemistry, my head crushed in the grip of the speeches of psychiatrists, an XXL fear locked in my stomach. In this story, I open a window on a space that is always closed: that of the psychiatric hospital and the violence that one encounters and undergoes there, that of the consultations which dissociate two very distinct worlds. On the one hand, the psychiatrized, on the other, those who have the rights to dominate. A space in which the abuse of power is in full swing. This is the story I am telling.
I have mental health concerns, I had them before psychiatry, I still have them today and I watch my head like we watch milk on the fire. To feel stronger I needed to find out how to accurately tell my own story, and I wanted a story stuck as close as possible to the intimate so that others can find themselves there. This book comes from a desire for pooling: for once, the transmission of useful information is done on our side. I wrote so that we feel less alone, I wrote in the crudeness of events, without smoothing over the facts, without trying to minimize their cruel impact.
A charged story that nevertheless feels like a breath of fresh air.
• Thirteen, Discovery, coll. Cahier libre, February 2023, 16.50 euros
