Abstract
This chapter presents the major historical steps in the development of clinical sociology in Quebec, the Canadian province that has a majority of French-speaking Canadians. The foundations of the clinical approach in Quebec first came from U.S. influences in sociological and psychosocial works, mainly from the Chicago School and the human relations movement in the 1950s and 1960s. A second phase is characterized by European influences, mostly from France; these were theories based on post-Marxist critical sociology and what was called the psycho-sociological approach, a mix of sociology and psychoanalysis. Those theoretical dimensions supported new fields of social practice: the planning of change in the US and social analysis in Europe. Organizational development and community development are good illustrations of the Participatory Action Research (PAR) model that serves as the main reference of those practices. Then, in the 1980s, came the idea of clinical sociology to Canada with an international network reinforcing that orientation. In recent years, in Quebec, a clinical perspective in organizational settings and in community groups focusing on healthy work strategies has been developed. Alongside the overall PAR model, a specific methodology of life narratives or life stories in small groups or community groups gained in importance.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Sévigny was trained in Québec by the social psychologist Bernard Mailhot, a disciple of Lewin. Other psychologists—Fernand Roussel, Roger Tessier, Michelle Roussin, Yvan Tellier, Yves Saint-Arnaud, André Carrière—also played important roles in the development of psycho-sociology.
- 2.
This period of Québec history, known as the Quiet Revolution, also was characterized by a major reform of state institutions, under the direction of new political leadership, following the election of the Liberal Party and its program of participative and democratic changes.
- 3.
Social analysis and sociotechnical approaches were first developed in England.
- 4.
A number of names can be mentioned: Robert Sévigny and Gilles Houle (sociologists at the University of Montreal); Jacques Rhéaume, a sociologist, and Simone Landry, a psychologist (Department of Communication, University of Québec in Montreal); Danielle Desmarais, an anthropologist (Department of Social Work), and Shirley Roy, a sociologist (Department of Sociology), from the same university; Monique Morval, a psychologist and the director of the doctoral program in Applied Social Sciences, University of Montreal; Adrienne Chambon, a sociologist, University of Toronto; and others.
- 5.
Some of the orientations of qualitative research in Québec are shared with a clinical perspective.
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Rhéaume, J. (2021). Clinical Sociology in Québec: When Europe Meets America. In: Fritz, J.M. (eds) International Clinical Sociology. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54584-0_4
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