The National Assembly on Thursday rejected a controversial text which called on “to condemn and prohibit psychoanalytic practices” in the treatment of autism.
The deputies of the National Assembly opposed this Thursday to a controversial text, signed by nearly a hundred deputies The Republicans, which aimed to “condemn and ban psychoanalytic practices” in the treatment of autism. Opposed to “an unhappy business”, “unprecedented attack against all health professionals”, the Secretary of State for Disabled People and the Fight against Exclusion, Ségolène Neuville, regretted in the hemicycle that this motion for a resolution has “the effect of reviving tensions which no longer exist”. The text was acclaimed by political figures, in particular Laurent Wauquiez, Bernard Debré, Bernard Accoyer, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet but also Thomas Thevenoud (ex-PS).
Reallocate all funding
These deputies demanded that only therapies and educational programs in accordance with the recommendations of the High Authority of Health (HAS) be paid for by the community. They felt that the government should engage the “criminal liability of health professionals who oppose scientific advances and commit medical errors in autism.”
If the text did not have the binding value of a law, it tried to convince the government to put in place a better management of autistic people and proposed to “reallocate all the funding” to “scientifically validated approaches that have proof of their effectiveness ”to the detriment of those which are not recommended – in this case psychoanalysis.
A petition on change.org
Unsurprisingly, the law resolution had provoked the anger of psychoanalysts, while the debate on the contribution of psychoanalysis in the management of autism remains unresolved. The European Inter-Association of Psychoanalysis, which brings together 12 associations, had denounced a “liberticidal”, “defamatory and slanderous” proposal.
This proposal would be “prejudicial to the majority of autistic subjects”, added these psychoanalysts, outraged by the threats on the economic and penal level.
The collective of 39, which represents professionals and several patient associations, for its part demanded the withdrawal of the recommendations of the HAS and called for signing the petition on change.org – approved in particular by child psychiatrists – against “science of state ”.
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