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In 2022, the French National Authority for Health (Haute Autorité de la Santé) issued a recommendation concerning the announcement of a “severe psychiatric diagnosis” to an adult “patient,” insisting on the caution to be taken and emphasizing the active participation of the “patient” in this process. In this article, we analyze some of the paradoxical aspects of this recommendation: the contrast between its ambition for practice and the actual situation in French psychiatry, the essentialization of a “co-constructed” diagnosis, the demand for truthfulness with regard to the “patient” accompanied by the trivialization of the traumatic potential of the “announcement” (e.g., in the patient's records), the assertion of the exclusively clinical nature of such a diagnosis according to a protocol that conflicts with the singular encounter between the person being cared for and his or her entourage. These paradoxes seem inherent to the situation of an authority placed in a position of supporting empowerment, which necessarily brings together those receiving care and those providing it.