The Art of the Weak: Bad Habits of Psychiatric Patients as Tactics of Everyday Resistance (Part 2)

The second part of the essay develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the harmful habits of psychiatric patients. The author returns to the works of Georgy Gurvich to demonstrate the multi-layered nature of social control and uses Michel de Certeau’s differentiation of strategies and tactics to interpret empirical observations. The psychiatric institution is viewed as a subject of strategies: it controls space, time, resources, and symbols, striving for standardization for the sake of self-preservation. Patients, lacking a strategic “place”, act tactically – snatching “their time” from shared time (smoke breaks), appropriating places outside supervision, planning “revelries”, and using coffee as a ritual of social solidarity. The text also discusses de Certeau’s critique of Foucault and Bourdieu and the influence of economic and social capital (Bourdieu) on patients’ rehabilitative potential. Conclusion: harmful habits should be viewed as everyday tactics of resistance, with practical implications for clinical practice and social policy.