Get informed, exchange ideas, shake up certainties on questions that are disturbing… This is the ambition of the European Bioethics Forum in Strasbourg. On the program for this fifteenth edition, from January 29 to February 1, 2025: mental health.
Nicolas Marquis, professor of sociology at the Louvain Catholic Institute, Saint-Louis Brussels, is interested in mental health issues. He will participate in the debate on January 31 at 4 p.m. “Well-being in question”.
“I observe coaching practices and discourses related to well-being as one might observe witchcraft practices. Why does this work? Does working on yourself really produce any effects? The documentary Kaizenwhich traces the Himalayan ascent of YouTuber Inoxtag, why does this speak to us? This corresponds to an individualistic moral state, which values individual autonomy. We do not compromise with our potential and it is our responsibility to achieve performance. These practices have enjoyed significant success, less because of their effectiveness, than because they allow us to put into music this belief that we have something important within ourselves.
“These wellness techniques are instruments of distinction. All societies have resources to give meaning to what happens to us. This allows the passage to explain the origin of misfortune, by answering this question: “why is this falling on me?” The classic functioning of attitudes towards misfortune is that we tend to have a projective attitude, to place the reasons for the misfortune that befalls us outside ourselves. Anthropologists have shown that when faced with misfortune, we have the reaction of asking ourselves: “who wants me”and to ask the question: “why did the tree fall on me?”
“The attitude that is now socially valued is to ask: “What can I do to get out of this and not who blames me?” We will therefore focus on what allows us to move the problem by cultivating our “inner potential”. It becomes our responsibility to work on ourselves. This dynamic makes it possible to bring out victims who are more “sympathetic” than others and not to highlight those who complain. Hence the success of a concept like resilience, which makes you the person you are: the attitude you have is an attitude of taking charge. »
Source: www.liberation.fr
