Physician, psychiatrist, addiction specialist, former head of the Community Psychiatry Service of the Department of Psychiatry at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). Currently Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine (FBM) of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Humanities in Medicine (IHM).
His interest in community psychiatry and mental health has led him, for many years, to study the relationships between psychiatry and religion, and between neuroscience and spirituality.
Jacques Besson
Speaker
Re-enchanting consciousness: toward a medicine of body, mind and soul
Speech
At the heart of the 21st century, a major challenge stands before us: the exploration of consciousness. Human consciousness cannot be reduced to what artificial intelligence claims to imitate. It transcends mere cognitive processes: it breathes through the body, it stirs within feelings, it shines through experience, and it rises into the spiritual dimension. It is relationship, it is presence, it is encounter.
Yet mental health has never been as threatened as it is today, and the urgency of the situation compels us to move beyond any reductionist vision of the human being. My clinical experience, particularly in the field of addiction medicine, reveals how the obsession with a single mode of thinking can imprison, alienate, and deprive individuals of their freedom, creativity, and sense of responsibility.
This is why we must restore consciousness to its full breadth — and with it, promote a truly integrative medicine: a medicine of body, mind, and soul, capable of reconciling the human being with their depth, dignity, and vocation for wholeness.