From Alienism to the Birth of Modern Psychiatry: A Neurological Story?

Abstract

The interactions between developing neurology and psychiatry in Paris are of interest, in a city which was the main center for studies on the nervous system and its disorders during the nineteenth century. Contrary to a common view, and in spite of an established tradition for mental diseases, emerging neurology had a much stronger influence on psychiatry (‘alienism’) than the reverse. This was largely due to the school built up by Jean-Martin Charcot, which was organized around the study and management of hysteria. Although Charcot himself always claimed his disinterest in mental medicine, he stimulated the development of an original scientific approach to nervous system conditions, along with a structured academic teaching, while alienism paradoxically remained stuck in organicism, after Antoine Bayle’s report in 1822 of ‘arachnitis’ as the substratum of general paresis of the insane. Contrary to alienism, the young neurological school was able of self-criticism, and progressively underscored mental factors in hysteria. This led to the paradox that neurologists were active in a disease with a recognized lack of organic lesion, while alienists were postulating brain lesions in all mental disorders. The neurological activity thus indirectly and involuntarily led to the first developments of psychodynamic concepts in mental diseases. The academic evolution led to the launch of a faculty chair of mental and brain diseases in 1875, which was taken over for nearly half a century by direct pupils of Charcot: Benjamin Ball, Alix Joffroy, and Gilbert Ballet held the position until 1916, supporting the development of modern psychiatry in general hospitals, while alienism progressively disappeared at the turn of the century.