Les évolutions institutionnelles et théoriques de la psychiatrie française entre 1838 et 1914

Abstract

The text of 1838, “law of philanthropy and general police”, results of compromises between the “Doctrinaire” philosophy of the monarchy of July (Royer-Collard), the political management of social problems and the obligations of public security. It is marked by preeminence of isolation from judicial interdiction (Esquirol, Falret), administrative centralization (general inspector Ferrus), care of financial gestion, prevention of the arbitrary sequestrations, recognition of the asylum physicians and suspicion on the private asylums, often religious. But the departmental establishments destined to the insane are been generally built in the second half of the 19th century, at the time of the industrial Revolution, without consideration to social mutations that operate then, from which results the development of the asylum chronicity. Several French alienists play a political part in the parliaments of the 2nd (Trélat) and of the 3rd Republic (Bourneville). Most do not establish correlations between the increase of the insane and the revolutions of the 19th century. They do not also generally give psychiatric diagnosis about the insurgents of Paris 1848 and 1871 Revolutions. During the 1860 decade, several lawsuits of presumed arbitrary sequestrations (Sandon, Garsonnet) come to the first political criticisms of the 1838 law. About ten projects of reform of this law are elaborated between 1870 and 1912 (Gambetta, Roussel, Bourneville, Dubief, Strauss). They emphasize on the intervention of the justice in the psychiatric internments and on the suppression of private asylums, but do not end in. Ambulatory consultations (Magnan) and “opened” departments are however organized, either in asylums (Marandon de Montyel), or in general hospitals (Régis, Ballet). The concepts of heredity (Lucas, 1847) and of degeneracy (Morel, 1857) spread from psychiatry to general medicine. The forensic psychiatry expands with the increasing roll of medical experts (Chaumié circular, 1905) and the social implication of the alienists develops during the same time (Bourneville, Toulouse).