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Summary:
Some so-called ''patients'' come to a doctor's practice or to a health care centre and demand to be treated on the basis of the ''compulsory treatment'' stipulated in legal texts. Numerous legal texts stipulate that care must be granted to individuals who do not ask for it, hence the advent of a new therapeutic relation where a third-party authority intervenes between the patient and the doctor. The compulsory treatment is the opposite of a traditional doctor-patient relationship since an administrative or legal authority proposes to the patient an alternative solution that includes a sanction that can be avoided if treatment is provided (Article of Law dated 1954, Article of Law dated 1970, obligations of treatment as stipulated in Article 58 of the Criminal Law Procedure and Article 132-45 of the new Law Procedure. The sentenced subject remains free to choose the doctor and the treatment centre. The author discusses the practical implications of this compulsory treatment, the questions it raises from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. Within that framework, medical and psychological care only represent one of numerous means to prevent subsequent crimes. These provisions, apparently contrary, call for a reflection on our role within such a system, raise the issue of their complementarity, and of their potential for articulation and operation.