Integration of a psychoanalytic liaison department at a public hospital

A general overview of liaison-psychoanalysis in a general hospital is presented. The team's trajectory is revisited, as generating a presence in the inpatient units: a demand which changes from a purely psychiatric, scarcely operative level to an acknowledgment of subjectivity. Generally, this appears disruptively in medical proceedings. Two case histories are presented: (i) 'the tenant' and (ii) 'the nail-polishing file'. With regard to the first case history, the transference in its double aspect, with the patient as well as with the unit's staff, is examined. The analyst's intervention seeks to untangle the impasse, which prevents the physicians from helping the patient. With regard to the second case history, in which the de-mystification aspects of liaison work are shown, the horror that the so-called 'mental illness' can produce in the medical institution is explored. The aim of narrating this experience is to preserve a psy-space in the hospital where the overwhelming technological developments menace with its disappearance.