Essay on self -giving

So here is the new “ Baudelot “, As we are used to saying in the world of publishing. A new vintage whose grape variety only should be enough to attract amateurs (of sociology of course). Especially since, to spin the mercantile metaphor, it is not one, but two “ Baudelot For the price of one we have here. Because here, if once again Christian Baudelot is written with four hands, recalling by this simple fact, that in addition to being a “ combat sport “, Sociology is a team sport, any resemblance to the previous works of the young retiree seems to stop there. First, because Roger Establet, the always accomplice, gave way to Olga Baudelot, wife of Christian and researcher in psychology (yes, you have read, a sociologist and a psychologist can manage to cohabit !) Specialized in early childhood at the National Institute for Educational Research (INRP), and above all because it is not strictly speaking a quantitative sociological survey as it likes the latter, but a “ life story ». A story that the two authors are particularly legitimized to report since it is their own life. The singular is particularly meaningful here, as is the need for this text for having been written jointly by Olga and Christian Baudelot, because the experience they relate here particularly the question of individual identity, here in the couple.

However, this is not exactly a self-analysis intended to give new light to the work of one or the other, as had started to carry out Pierre Bourdieu, but a need born of an adventure arrived at the couple two years ago. It all started when Olga discovered that it had renal polycystosis, an incurable disease which gradually degenerates towards a terminal renal failure, synonymous with dialysis, exhaustion and dependence. A scenario that Olga knows only too well, because, evil being genetic, she was able to attend the ordeal endured by her own mother, but also by her father who faithfully supported his wife “ in all times », Sacrigating almost as much as her life prior to the disease. Haunted by these images, and particularly by that of the fistula which had come to distort the maternal arm to allow dialysis to be carried out three times a week, Olga is then confronted with a dilemma: revive this experience with her husband and two children, already spectators and actors of the test of his parents, or ask one of them one of their kidneys. Only transplantation, in fact, can make it possible to stop the effects of polycystosis.

Christian immediately volunteered, arguing as a good reader of Marcel Mauss that he does it first in his own interest. And this is where a real (psychological) obstacle course begins for the two spouses. Because an organ donation is far from being an innocuous operation, especially when it is carried out from a living donor – necessarily a relative of the recipient -, as happens in less than one in ten in France. It is this journey of several months, a real odyssey towards a life “ normal Punctuated by medical, psychological but also legal tests, which Olga and Christian Baudelot therefore retrace over these pages, each taking the pen in turn to deliver their impressions, account for their reflections, motivations and personal anxieties, thus making two points of view on the same experience.

We thus discover the multiple stakeholders of the chain of “ Don “Organs, and in particular the important comfort function that the testimonies of those who are already” gone by (Which is also the main reason for this book), and more broadly a real inventory of organ transplants in France today. It’s the “ sociologist Who resumes his rights here, and Christian Baudelot cannot help but punctuate his story of statistical data as to the means of waiting for a transplant according to the body and the center of transplantation (all not being housed in the same brand, far from it) for example, or considerations relating to compared law, to explain the specificities and the logic of French legislation which frames this type of operations. Thus we learn, among other things, that the management of the waiting lists is a science worthy of the most elaborate statistical models in order to rule out any feeling of treatment injustice on the part of the pending receivers, that, since the Caillavet law of 1976 (revised in 1994), we are all presumed to accept the gift of our bodies in the event of brain death, that the transplant on the part of a living donor arouses surgeons, one of the oaths of which is indeed “ First do not harm “, And that finally our legislators have read Mauss well (and especially observed the previous ones in the United States) by establishing an anonymity barrier between the deceased donor and the recipient to extinguish any hint of” counter-gift From the latter or the family of the first.

But above all, we discover that the experience of organ donation is a more psychological than medical adventure. Surgeons now control their technique on their fingertips, and pharmaceutical progress has made questions of compatibility less and less problematic, it is another pair of sleeves on the other hand when it comes to testing the motivations of the donor as many times, and an art almost as delicate as that of the operations room, that which consists in distilling the possibility of withdraw process. It is not without a certain amusement that we thus see Christian Baudelot arriving boast of the psychological interview, as a sociologist steeped in certainties as to the determinations “ interested “From his act, and then remind this costume to agree to listen (and be listened to by) the specialist in the discipline” enemy ». This thus helps him to really think about the implications of his “ Don “, As well as to accept to be admired for his act, in other words to admit that there is a share of altruism.

A “ health walk ». The title therefore presents a double-sensor: it is first, in the literal sense, the intimate account of a particular care path, to use the administrative title of the National Insurance Fund. And if there is no question here of the organization of the French health system, we can however read “ hollow A certain tribute to it from the two authors whose entire treatment took place within the framework of the public. It allowed them to look at their adventure a posteriori as a real “ health walk “, In the figurative of the expression this time, compared to the suffering endured by other patients or at the risks incurred in other cases of transplantation. It is undoubtedly as much to try a little bit to relieve the anxiety of those who are led to share their experience as to continue a psychological work that could be described as “ digestion That Olga and Christian Baudelot decided to write this story. But his reading can echo everyone in their own experience, family and medical, which does not prevent it from being as pleasant as “ health walk “…

This article is published in partnership with the Links-Socio site on which was published a first version: http://www.liens-socio.org/