The body and subjectivity in social clinical work

Based on material coming from clinical work with the homeless, this text explores three logical moments of the process of social and especially psychological rehabilitation. The first moment covers the two-year interval of the encounter on the street; the second moment is the time of leaving street life, a time when certain traumatic points emerge and are sometimes followed by a decompensation; the third moment is a time of calming down, when the subjects begin to elaborate a demand, in this case trying to understand what was it that had lead them to live on the street. The goal of this paper is to build a clinical position sustainable by a clinician working in these areas of the extreme.