Professional knowledge and professional self-interest: The rise and fall of Monomania in 19th-century France

International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 385-396

  Goldstein, Jan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL FACTOR; FRANCE; MANIA; OCCUPATION; REVIEW; SCIENCE;

EID: 0032172743     PISSN: 01602527     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0160-2527(98)00029-6     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. 1 NEW YORKER, Dec. 21, 1992, at 47.
2. 2 CHARIVARI, 20 juin 1846, reprinted in Loys Delteil, LE PEINTRE-GRAVEUR ILLUSTRÉ, Vols. 20-29 (Daumier: Paris, 1925-30), Plate 1355.
3. 3 Le grammairien et le causeur, 2 JOURNAL DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE, 3d ser., 522 (1839).
4. 4 For an overview of the classical Anglo-American sociological model of professions and professionalization, see Jan Goldstein, Foucault among the Sociologists: The 'Disciplines' and the History of the Professions, 23 HISTORY AND THEORY 170 (1984), esp. 174-75. The classical model has recently been powerfully criticized and revamped within the field of sociology itself; see Andrew Abbott, THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSIONS: AN ESSAY ON THE DIVISION OF EXPERT LABOR (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
5. 4 For an overview of the classical Anglo-American sociological model of professions and professionalization, see Jan Goldstein, Foucault among the Sociologists: The 'Disciplines' and the History of the Professions, 23 HISTORY AND THEORY 170 (1984), esp. 174-75. The classical model has recently been powerfully criticized and revamped within the field of sociology itself; see Andrew Abbott, THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSIONS: AN ESSAY ON THE DIVISION OF EXPERT LABOR (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
6. 5 Jan Goldstein, CONSOLE AND CLASSIFY: THE FRENCH PSYCHIATRIC PROFESSION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
7. 6 Id. ch. 5.
8. 7 B.-A. Morel, ETUDES CLINIQUES: TRAITÉ THÉORIQUE ET PRATIQUE DES MALADIES MENTALES (Nancy: Grimblot; Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1852), at 1: 411.
9. 8 Goldstein, supra note 5, ch. 6, esp. at 245-57, 267-73.
10. 9 On the Esquirol circle in particular, and the patron-and-circle structure more generally as a typical of the French sociology of knowledge, see id. ch. 4.
11. 10 Id. ch. 5 at 174-75, 178.
12. 11 Id. at 189-92. The alienist who stigmatized monomania as a "sin" was Valentin Magnan, Leçon d'ouverture (Asile Sainte-Anne), 11 PROGRÈS MÉDICAL 87 (1883) [my italics].
13. 11 Id. at 189-92. The alienist who stigmatized monomania as a "sin" was Valentin Magnan, Leçon d'ouverture (Asile Sainte-Anne), 11 PROGRÈS MÉDICAL 87 (1883) [my italics].
14. 12 Stop (pseud. for Louis Pierre Gabriel Bernard Morel-Retz), Le Salon de 1874, JOURNAL AMUSANT (June 13, 1874). The cartoonist's monomanétie is a loosely invented term; since its inception, the disease had always been called monomanie.
15. 13 Coar d'assises de Paris: Affaire d'Auguste Papavoine, JOURNAL DE PARIS (Feb. 25,1825).
16. 14 Goldstein, supra note 5, at 169-71.
17. 15 Id. ch. 5 at 169-72.
18. 16 For a fuller account, see id., ch. 5 at 179-89, and ch. 7 at 267-73.
19. 17 Id. ch. 8, at 278-79.
20. 18 Id. ch. 5, at 166-69.
21. 19 Id. ch. 5, at 189-96, and ch. 8, at 285-99.
22. 20 A.-J.-F. Brierre de Boismont, Review of Morel, Etudes cliniques, 4 ANNALES MÉDICO-PSYCHOLOGIQUES, 2nd ser., 621 (1852).
23. 21 Emile Blanche, letter dated 18 août 1874, Institut de France, Ms. 4828, folio 80.
24. 22 Henri Legrand du Saulle, Les signes physiques des folies raisonnantes, 15 ANNALES MÉDICO-PSYCHOLOGIES, 5th ser., 433 (1876), esp. at 433.
25. 23 Ian R. Dowbiggin, INHERITING MADNESS: PROFESSIONALIZATION AND PSYCHIATRIC KNOWLEDGE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), at 128.
26. 24 Legrand du Saulle, supra note 22, at 435-46.
27. 25 Id. at 434.
28. 26 Michel Foucault, SURVEILLER ET PUNIR: NAISSANCE DE LA PRISON (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), Part III, passim.
29. 27 The centrality of the law-discipline relation in Foucault was first brought to my attention by Laura Engelstein; see her Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia, 98 AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 338 (1993), as well my comment on it, Jan Goldstein, Framing Discipline with Law: Problems and Promises of the Liberal State, 98 AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 338 364 (1993). Keith Michael Baker takes up some of the same issues in A Foucauldian French Revolution? in Jan Goldstein, ed., FOUCAULT AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), at 187-205.
30. 27 The centrality of the law-discipline relation in Foucault was first brought to my attention by Laura Engelstein; see her Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia, 98 AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 338 (1993), as well my comment on it, Jan Goldstein, Framing Discipline with Law: Problems and Promises of the Liberal State, 98 AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 338 364 (1993). Keith Michael Baker takes up some of the same issues in A Foucauldian French Revolution? in Jan Goldstein, ed., FOUCAULT AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), at 187-205.
31. 27 The centrality of the law-discipline relation in Foucault was first brought to my attention by Laura Engelstein; see her Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia, 98 AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 338 (1993), as well my comment on it, Jan Goldstein, Framing Discipline with Law: Problems and Promises of the Liberal State, 98 AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 338 364 (1993). Keith Michael Baker takes up some of the same issues in A Foucauldian French Revolution? in Jan Goldstein, ed., FOUCAULT AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), at 187-205.
32. 28 See on this point, Michel Foucault, About the Concept of the 'Dangerous Individual' in 19th-century Legal Psychiatry, 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PSYCHIATRY, 1 (1978). Critics of Foucault have sometimes charged that he presented too stark an opposition between the exteriority of law and the interiority of psychiatry. It should be said in Foucault's defense that his Histoire de la folie (1961) recognized that, long before the birth of psychiatry, Western criminal law concerned itself with nuanced evaluations of responsibility and intentionality. But Foucault nonetheless contended that there was a sharp disjuncture between the legal discourse of mental state and the later administrative discourse of internment, whose categories were based on the dangerousness of the individual to society. He also asserted that psychiatry grew out of the administrative discourse and derived from it the tendency to ascribe enduring identities, rather than passing states of mind, to individuals. See Foucault, HISTOIRE DE LA FOLIE À L'AGE CLASSIQUE, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), Part I, chap. 4, "Expériences de la folie"; and Colin Cordon, Histoire de la folie: An unknown book by Michel Foucault, 3 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 3 (1990), esp. at 12-13.
33. 28 See on this point, Michel Foucault, About the Concept of the 'Dangerous Individual' in 19th-century Legal Psychiatry, 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PSYCHIATRY, 1 (1978). Critics of Foucault have sometimes charged that he presented too stark an opposition between the exteriority of law and the interiority of psychiatry. It should be said in Foucault's defense that his Histoire de la folie (1961) recognized that, long before the birth of psychiatry, Western criminal law concerned itself with nuanced evaluations of responsibility and intentionality. But Foucault nonetheless contended that there was a sharp disjuncture between the legal discourse of mental state and the later administrative discourse of internment, whose categories were based on the dangerousness of the individual to society. He also asserted that psychiatry grew out of the administrative discourse and derived from it the tendency to ascribe enduring identities, rather than passing states of mind, to individuals. See Foucault, HISTOIRE DE LA FOLIE À L'AGE CLASSIQUE, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), Part I, chap. 4, "Expériences de la folie"; and Colin Cordon, Histoire de la folie: An unknown book by Michel Foucault, 3 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 3 (1990), esp. at 12-13.
34. 28 See on this point, Michel Foucault, About the Concept of the 'Dangerous Individual' in 19th-century Legal Psychiatry, 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PSYCHIATRY, 1 (1978). Critics of Foucault have sometimes charged that he presented too stark an opposition between the exteriority of law and the interiority of psychiatry. It should be said in Foucault's defense that his Histoire de la folie (1961) recognized that, long before the birth of psychiatry, Western criminal law concerned itself with nuanced evaluations of responsibility and intentionality. But Foucault nonetheless contended that there was a sharp disjuncture between the legal discourse of mental state and the later administrative discourse of internment, whose categories were based on the dangerousness of the individual to society. He also asserted that psychiatry grew out of the administrative discourse and derived from it the tendency to ascribe enduring identities, rather than passing states of mind, to individuals. See Foucault, HISTOIRE DE LA FOLIE À L'AGE CLASSIQUE, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), Part I, chap. 4, "Expériences de la folie"; and Colin Cordon, Histoire de la folie: An unknown book by Michel Foucault, 3 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 3 (1990), esp. at 12-13.