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The role of language in psychiatric treatment in the French Romantic Age1: A note on Dr Laurent Cerise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Jean Starobinski
Jean Starobinski
Affiliation:
Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Geneva, Switzerland
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Sysnopsis

At the beginning of the 19th century France had many experts on the ‘moral treatment of insanity’. Very few of them, however, applied their experience and theories to the role of language in the development of behaviour from childhood on, in the pathogenesis of mental disorders, and in psychotherapy. To Dr. Louis Cerise, one of the founders of the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, belongs the great distinction of formulating a theory which tried to take account of the necessary contribution of language to individual development. In his book Des Fonctions et des Maladies Nerveuses (1842), he put forward a view of the relationship between the individual and society. His concept of ‘the goal of activity’ still merits our attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , November 1974 , pp. 360 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

2 Leuret, F.Du Traitement Moral de la Folie, p. 156, J.-B. Baillière. Paris. 1840.Google Scholar

3 For further information about Buchez, one of the founders of ‘Christian Democracy’, see Isambert's, François-AndréBuchez ou l'^ge Théologique de la Sociologie. Ed. Cujas, . Paris. 1968.Google Scholar

4 Cerise, L.Des Fonctions et des Maladies Nerveuses. Introduction, p. xxvi. Germer-Baillière: Paris. 1842.Google Scholar

For the classical background of the problem, see Entralgo, Pedro Lain, La Curación por la Palabra en la Antigüedad Clásicá. Revista de Occidente: Madrid. 1958.Google Scholar