À propos de l'expertise collective de lINSERM sur le « trouble des conduites » : quelques problèmes critiques de la pédopsychiatrie contemporaine

Although the INSERM evaluation concerning child and adolescent "behavioral trouble" in 2005 resulted in a polemical debate, it also created the impetus for an epistemological debate. Indeed, it revealed a fundamental problem in contemporary psychiatry whose very identity is threatened by a serious division between its founding "sciences", between its two principal theoretical and practical bases the one traditionally attached to the field of humanities (psychology, social science, philosophy, clinical psychopathology and psychoanalysis) and the one attached to what are known as the a "hard" sciences whose model is biology. The comprehension of this conceptual heterogeneity in psychiatry has opened afield of thought which is both rich and necessary. Contemporary psychiatry is indeed evolving, but it remains anchored at the crossroads of humanities and experimental sciences, the sciences of interpersonal practice and the fundamental sciences of behavior. The necessary condition for mutual enrichment is a pluralistic scientific policy which encourages exchanges and collaboration between clinical and experimental or objective sciences, between a "hard" sciences and humanities, and which counterbalances the influences between them, particularly in terms of scientific authority.