Those associated with the approach include François Tosquelles, Jean Oury, Felix Guattari, Frantz Fanon, and Georges Canguilhem.
Institutional psychotherapy proposed a radical restructuring of the insane asylum and the mental health clinic where patients actively participated in running the facility.
Institutional psychotherapy is also practiced by Patrick Chemla at the Centre Artaud in Reims and has spread to Spain and Italy.
Guattari wrote of a "systematic failure" of many psychiatrists to understand "what was going on outside the hospital walls", leading to a tendency to psychologize social problems.
Guattari referred to the interactive transference that occurred at the La Borde clinic as "transversality", while Oury called it "transferential constellation".