The psychological intervention at home: A funambulist-like practising for patients with serious somatic pathology and their family

This work gives thought to an aspect of the psychologist's practice which is not very common: home visits. The psychologist must be able to remove himself from the frame of reference connected to the practice of the traditional clinical interview. On the basis of home meetings with a patient suffering from a serious somatic pathology and his family, we propose to examine the specific nature of this place and how it may bias the creation of a thinking space. The delicate exercise for the psychologist, like a tightrope walker, would consist in establishing a permanence of the environment in a moving environment, which is someone's living space. This theatre at home would encourage in the patient the use of acting, in the form of an improvised stage production. Moreover, he would have to use the objects at home as objects representing the physical medium that would mean or lead to symbolization. Given the unpredictability of the place, this work examines alternately the specificities of the environment and points the way to other areas of thinking In the end, wouldn't this aspect of the practice be a reversed process of the so-called traditional environment that is necessary to any therapeutic intervention? (C) 2015 Societe francaise de psychologie. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.