« Mendiants thésauriseurs », « Diogènes » ou « Pluchkines » : travailler auprès de personnes vivant dans l’incurie en France

Abstract

Here are gathered a series of accounts coming from professionals – nurses, psychologists, sociologist, urbanist – working with people diagnosed as suffering from the “Diogenes Syndrome”. This syndrome, which comprehension is still controversial, is often defined as a trouble combining a tendency to compulsive hoarding (syllogomania), a great neglect of oneself and of one’s habitation, and a pronounced social isolation. Between these persons and the fallen objects they gather and share their lives with, a type of continuity appears, symbolic as well as concrete (by the smells, the clothes, etc.), to such an extent that they both become “irrecoverable” in the eyes of their relatives and of their neighbourhood. Thus, these accounts are a way of questioning a hypothetical continuum, discursive as well as practical, between people and things placed out of the world, seen and handled as if they couldn’t be reintegrated in it, or else at a very great cost.

Keywords

• waste
• Diogene's Syndrome
• compulsive hoarding
• carelessness
• social worker