A book bursting with its author's energy and enthusiasm for an ethics of interpersonal bonds and creative sharing.

Developmental therapist Olivier Brisson passionately relates his encounters with people whose will to live has for various reasons been weakened, detailing the ways psychiatric institutions paralyze, destroy, and drain the life out of the delicate bonds that can be formed during the caregiving experience. Alternating personal stories with attempts to rethink mental care for such conditions as autism, Brisson champions an unruly practice that resists dehumanizing "protocols" but never gives into anti-intellectualism or rejects psychoanalytical approaches out of hand.