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Chapter 1: Degeneration Theory in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century France and the Rise of Naturalism
Tout se passe comme si les médecins étaint amenés à traduire dans un langage scientifique les fantasmes que hantaient la bourgeoisie de leur temps. Alain Corbin l’écrivain se prend pour un médecin et théorise son faire en langage médical. Henri Mitterand
1) Introduction
This chapter will trace the evolution of the concept of degeneration from the discourse of French Enlightenment natural philosophers to its adoption by early psychiatry or aliénisme,85 its increasing application to social and medical thought in the nineteenth century and to its incorporation by Émile Zola into his theory of the Naturalist novel. The development of degenerationist thinking in the new fields of public health (hygiène) and psychiatry will be described followed by its blossoming into an all-encompassing theory of insanity and environmental disease as a result of Aliénisme: defined as, ―Partie de la médecine qui traite de l'aliénation mentale‖ (Grand Robert de la langue française). Grand Robert goes on to note that this word, which it claims first appeared in 1833, tended to be associated with mental disturbance in which a physical underlying cause was present, ―Durant le xixe siècle, âge d'or de l'aliénisme, les psychiatres vont chercher l'explication dernière des désordres de la conduite, de l'affectivité et de la pensée dans des causes physiques.‖ By contrast, psychiatrie, which appeared in 1842, was, ―rare avant la fin du xixe‖ and tended to be associated with, ―les maladies mentales, les troubles pathologiques de la vie psychique,‖ which were more functional in nature. Though not rigidly, I propose in this dissertation to use aliénisme and aliéniste (alienismo, alienista) to refer to psychiatry and psychiatrists up to 1890 and to reserve psychiatrie (psiquiatría) for the growth of modern psychiatry after 1890 founded by the German-language contributors of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. 85