Stance, bearing, fall. Towards a phenomenological anthropology of bearing in the world

Objectives. - Phenomenological anthropology makes it possible to reveal how the axis stance, bearing, fall casts light on our foundations, what carries us and what holds us in the human community. Against a backdrop of possible existential collapses, this basic anthropological structure organizes existence from gestation to the grave. Method. - Our method is descriptive and shows how stance, bearing and fall are embodied in the clinical aspects of child development, dementia, psychosis and extreme psycho-social precariousness. Results. - The quality of maternal bearing determines the stance of the child before it is taken over by the social sphere. The paranoid schizophrenic, obsessed by the appearance of others, shows by default that stance is also di-stance and re-sistance to the encroachment of the world, and the hebephrenic individual attempts to restore his or her hold on the world. Some demented senile persons renounce the Heideggerian concern with having to be and standing. In asphaltisation, the extreme precariousness of the homeless is the manifestation of the loss of stance following the collapse of supporting existential orders - habitat and social rank. Discussion. - While bearing conditions the ability to stand, maternal bearing, as well as the various modes of therapeutic bearing, always entails possible failures and deviations. Conclusion. - Phenomenological anthropology enables us to explore the axis stance, bearing and fall as a bodily reality, a reappraisal of paranoid schizophrenia and hebephrenia, as a metaphor for existence and its crises, and as an anthropological mandate that underpins the community, the ethic and the paradigm of the care relationship. (C) 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.