What is the psychological impact of prison?
Prison freedomThe prisoner's notion of space is also profoundly disturbed, partly, but not entirely, because of their confinement. For security reasons, prison cells are all the same. Inmates can put up pictures or posters, but they can't choose their furniture, for example. "We all attempt to set up our own space as we please, just as small territorial animals do," explains Jérôme Englebert. "But prisoners aren't allowed to do this, which can create psychological difficulties." There is nothing at the top of the pyramid, but for a person subjected to this inalienable system that has no substance, a form of freedom does remain, which the psychologist calls "prison freedom". What is this paradoxical freedom? Jérôme Englebert offers two quotes from Michel Foucault: "Where there is power, there is resistance" and "In this central and centralised humanity, the effect and instrument of complex power relations, bodies and forces subjected by multiple mechanisms of 'incarceration,' we must hear the distant roar of battle." In other words, faced with a system which seeks to suffocate all subjectivity, the cornerstone of prison freedom is profanation. In his book, Jérôme Englebert writes: "This involves gradually taking back from the system what belongs to human beings; profanation is a restitution of the body, space, time, ... identity.(…) there is freedom hiding in prisons, even if it's hard to see. There is always the possibility of a weak point, in all circumstances, even the most extreme." When confronted with the psychological difficulties or psychiatric pathologies of certain inmates, he considers it essential to talk with them about resistance to the relentless "machinery of subjugation," in order to help them regain a bit of freedom. |
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