Between technique and sense. Notes on Laura Fruggeri's thoughts on the therapeutic process

At a time when the collective imagination of caring is increasingly taking on a technical-specialist orientation, Laura Fruggeri's article moves against the current and highlights the "multi-componential" character of the therapeutic process. This means examining its behaviour through different co-ordinates of the care action which are inevitably intertwined, where technical knowledge is only one, although obviously very important, of the dimensions at stake. Seen in the form of complementary pairs between polarities in dynamic tension, these coordinates could be summarised as follows: the tension between technical and relational knowledge, the tension between the gaze on the action and that on its contexts of signification, the tension between what happens in the therapeutic setting and what happens in the wider social, cultural and institutional "scenario" of which the therapeutic setting is part - and active part. The article summarises these complementary couples into one: the technical-procedural/symbolic-relational couple.