Du désespoir existentiel : le Docteur Logre et la bipolarité de Lucrèce (1946)

Abstract

In a remarkable book published in 1946, the Parisian psychiatrist Benjamin Logre (1883–1963) analyzed the De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) of the great latin poet and philosopher Lucretius. He concluded that Lucretius was suffering from “intermittent psychosis” manic depressive (currently bipolar disorder) associated with an imaginative, emotional and anxious “constitution”. He noted that the mild “mental imbalance” gave superiority to the “gifted mind”: artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, men of action.