"An Active Pessimist" For the first time, Charles Rojzman accepted the presence of a movie camera inside one of his social therapy sessions: an experimental training program designed for trainers in the police academy. The experience, as troubling as it was astonishing, has as its goal helping policemen rebuild relationships with the hostile populations of the inner cities (fr.quartiers). Between role plays, self-awareness, questioning of institutions and meetings with invited guests from the quartiers, the Rojzman method opens the path for "knowing how to live together." Here are the psychotherapist’s explanations: Question: How did this project come (...)

North Montreal on a psychiatrist’s couch? Last spring, long before the riots, people from the neighborhood told themselves it would be a good idea. But only if they could choose a good couch and a good psychiatrist. Consider it done. Yesterday afternoon, North Montreal unveiled its psychiatrist. It’s not just anyone. They brought in Charles Rojzman, the French sociologist and psychotherapist who is an internationally renowned expert on urban crises. Rojzman is a kind of emergency room doctor of urban crises, a man with a fascinating background who developed an intervention he calls "social therapy," in the explosive context of the French working (...)