LOVING RELATIONSHIPS INTO PSYCHIATRIC INS TITUTION - FREEDOM OR ALIENATION

A Psychiatric Institution is primarily an environment where patients a re treated. It can also prove to be a meeting point for people who are psychologically unbalanced. It is not unusual for people to strike up loving relationships. If psycho-analysis teaches us that in a couple- relationship men look for a protective function against the most archa ic and least self-controlled elements of themselves, and this outside all psychopathological fields, it is not surprising what perception cl inics provide of these seriously ill patients who seem to form relativ ely functional relationships. Sociology, on the other hand, would seem to adhere to the homogamy rule, in the search of resemblances between partners. Through simple observation, ethology has highlighted such r elationships in psychiatric institutions. The motivations behind the c hoice of a partner within an institution do not appear to be that diff erent to those relevant to couples outside the normal psychopathologic al realm and therefore mental pathology would not seem to have an impa ct on loving relationships. It would seem for many of our patients, th e choice of eligible partners is even more limited and that the hospit al is perhaps the only place where homogamy can occur.