ST. ALBAN'S CASTLE

Situated on the Via Podensis, one of the routes to Santiago de Compostela, this castle has a very long history: it is mentioned as early as the ^12th century, and a fortress probably existed before that. The château became a psychiatric hospital in 1821, with the arrival of Joseph Tissot, known as Brother Hilarion, whose vocation was to serve the insane. He himself had been an inmate. In 1824, the Département acquired the building; the law requiring each département to have its own psychiatric hospital was not passed until 1838. It was often at the forefront of psychiatric care. In 1941, the arrival of François Tosquelles, a Catalan psychiatrist and Marxist republican condemned to death by Franco, had a profound impact on the institution, which subsequently retained his name. In addition to its patients, the hospital was a refuge for illegal immigrants and resistance fighters. Among them were Paul Eluard (a poet who also contributed to reflection on the condition of the mentally ill), Tristan Tzara (writer, poet and founder of the Dada movement), Gaston Baissette (doctor and writer) and philosopher Georges Canguilhem. Tosquelle had to go through his entire training again, working as a nurse and intern before becoming chief physician in 1952. In Saint-Alban, the Société du Gévaudan was founded, a movement that laid the foundations for institutional psychotherapy. For more than 25 years, the "journées de rencontres sur la psychothérapie institutionnelle" have been held here in June.