Neurologie et psychiatrie. Des relations historiques complexes

Abstract

In France, in the 19th century, French neurologists emerged as specialists among general medicine practitioners with no direct relationship to alienists. La Pitié-Salpêtrière was the Mecca of neurology and the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center that of psychiatry. The chair occupied by Charcot was above all neurologically unambiguous, unrelated to alienists. In the 20th century, the creation of a Certificate of Higher Studies (CES) in neuropsychiatry was decreed in 1949. In 1968, in accordance with the work of Henri Ey, it was proposed that neuropsychiatry be divided into two distinct CESs: neurology and psychiatry. This governmental decision was taken in a very particular context, that of the social upheaval and demonstrations of May 1968, which culminated in numerous demands and various reforms. The evolution of these two fields in France took a different path from that of Germany and the countries under its influence. In America, which is a mixture of cultures, there has been a development that could be considered to be a hybrid progression that was alternately in step with the French and at times more linked to Germany. We evoke the particular case of Jean Lhermitte. In recent years, many psychiatrists and neurologists, of all generations, have expressed the desire for a new reconciliation of these two specialties.