We the undersigned are academic faculty and researchers whose work engages with psychoanalysis, and we are writing from all over the world to support the Center for the Treatment of Young Psychotic Adults in Quebec City (known commonly as the “388” by reference to its street address), and to voice our deep concern that the government health service is planning to close the 388.

We have come to know the 388 thanks to the important publications, seminars, and conferences contributed by its founding analysts—Willy Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, and Lucie Cantin—to the field from 1976 to the present day, a number of which have been translated into English and Spanish.

Through their clinic for psychosis above all, but also through the 26 books they have published over the past decades, in addition to numerous articles in renowned scholarly journals, the analysts of GIFRIC have significantly impacted the field of psychoanalysis, which remains essential to major lines of critical thinking, from gender and queer theory to postcolonial theory and critical race studies, and to major disciplines from philosophy to literature and the social sciences. One of the key questions academics feel compelled to confront today is the question of the ways in which psychoanalysis must renew itself, if it is to make a significant contribution in the current contexts of the 21st century. This is precisely the question to which the work of the creators of the 388 provides a powerful answer. The concept of psychosis developed in Quebec, based on decades of treatment at the 388, offers a major, successful example of this urgent renewal of psychoanalytic theory and practice. It is no surprise that important recent works on the state and potential of psychoanalytic theory (Mills and Downing (eds.), 2019, Vanderwees, 2024) bring attention to the clinical work on psychosis in Quebec City.

The recently published Le Traitement psychanalytique des psychoses. Sa clinique et ses résultats [The Psychoanalytic Treatment of the Psychoses. Its Clinic and Results] (2024) results from an international congress held in May 2023, where the topic of psychosis drew a large audience from numerous countries to Quebec City.

Yet this is not an isolated event. Over the years, many academics working with psychoanalysis have attended the annual interdisciplinary training seminars GIFRIC has been organizing for anglophone academics and clinicians since the early 1990’s. These seminars have allowed us to come to understand the exemplary work of articulating theory and practice that GIFRIC has carried out in Quebec City, raising its cultural profile around the world. It would be disgraceful for Quebec to lose the center for treatment that has been a cornerstone of these world-renowned clinical and theoretical advancements, just when, for example, A Psychoanalysis for a Re-emergent Humanity: the Metapsychology of Willy Apollon, a collection of essays edited by Lucie Cantin, Jeffrey Librett, and Tracy McNulty that presents and elaborates upon the major theoretical contribution to Lacanian psychoanalysis constituted by Willy Apollon’s conceptualizations of psychosis and mondialisation, is forthcoming in the prestigious Insinuations series with SUNY Press.

At the core of all of this conceptual work–which includes a new theory of the historical age in which we live, a new theory of adolescence in modernity, and other important innovations–is the treatment offered to psychotic young adults. It is deplorable, absurd, and outrageous that the young adults currently at the 388 should be currently threatened with the loss of the effective, dignified, and humane treatment they are currently receiving, and that they should be told by the government health service that in its place they will receive the conventional modes of treatment that have been shown to be for them ineffectual. The treatment offered at the 388 has allowed its analysts to pioneer an understanding of the symptoms and underlying causes of psychotic conditions. This understanding opens new possibilities for the young adults engaging in this treatment, including the opportunity to pursue various fields of study and research in higher education, as well as the opportunity to secure gainful employment in the city, whereas the alternative is all too often entering the revolving door of institutionalization in psychiatric hospitals. As academics with jobs in institutions of higher education, we are directly confronted with the reality of the mental health crisis among young adults facing important choices for their future. The fact that the government health service thinks of closing the 388 at a moment when New York Governor Hochul “passed a $1 billion plan to transform the mental health continuum of care, starting to make up for decades of disinvestment,” with a view to “healthier, safer and stronger” New Yorkers (governor.ny.gov Announcement January 14, 2025) is plainly unreasonable, considering that the 388 has been operating effectively at a cost to the government of Quebec that is among the lowest per capita in the field of mental health care and dramatically less expensive than long-term commitment or hospitalization.

We urge the Government of the Province of Quebec and the C.I.U.S.S.S. (Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux) to reconsider this unwise decision–based on ideological presuppositions that are in line neither with advanced scientific and methodological discussions nor with the demonstrated practical results of the 388–and to instead continue to support this extraordinarily meritorious Center, which constitutes not only a precious resource for scholars, but above all a precious source of effective care for young adults in Quebec, and a model for potentially similar Centers around the globe.