Raymond Roussel's Cure with Pierre Janet.

Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) was an eccentric writer whose strange novelistic and theatrical work was launched by the surrealists and is still worshipped by the French intelligentia. While writing his first text at the age of 19 years, he presented a delusional episode marked by the conviction that he was shining like a sun and that he had acquired universal glory. He "fell back to earth" when the book was published and he realized that no one was stopping to gaze at him. He later led a ritualized life, continuing to write and eventually achieving success - glory even - with the champions of the surrealist revolution, who saw the genius in him. His eccentricities, permitted by his immense fortune, contributed to the legend and helped him to exist socially. He was also able to conceal his homosexuality, which appears to be closely dependent on an emotional infantilism. His pathology is recognized thanks to Pierre Janet's account (1859-1947) of his case in De l'Angoisse à l'Extase. Janet's accompanying psychotherapy, which supported him for many years, was effective in moving him towards a form of obsessive consolidation. Janet's therapeutic approach, however, is currently strongly criticized by dogmatic psychoanalysts. Roussel must have been aware of the artificial nature of his theatrical successes and he succumbed to a depressive state, taking refuge in barbiturate addiction. He died in a Palermo hotel room of a barbiturate overdose, considered to be suicidal.

'Fin-de-Siècle' epidemiology of hysteria.

An 'explanatory epidemiology' of disorders labelled 'hysteria' towards the end of the 19th century provides precious information--through the numerous statistical works of the period - about the conceptions of practitioners and the various cultural factors which made this era, in France, 'the golden age' of hysteria. The heyday of hysteria at the end of the century appears to be closely linked to the prestige of Charcot and the promotion of his ideas through the circle of his pupils. The disappearance after his death of hysteria, as he had described it in a defined and systematical manner, is a strong argument for considering it to be a transient mental illness, according to the definition of this concept by Ian Hacking. The regular appearance since then of new nonorganic diseases, avatars of hysteria, with a strong potential for contagiousness and whose causality is exterior to the person, as well as the persistence of the older, more characteristic forms, is evocative of the existence of an ancestral reactional mode taking on various clinical forms according to time and place.

Death of an alienist: Louis-Victor Marcé's final year.

The cause of death, at the age of 37, of Louis-Victor Marcé (1828-64), one of the most innovative alienists of the nineteenth century, was concealed by his contemporaries and colleagues. Recently it has been discovered that he committed suicide, but the circumstances and reasons for this were unknown. Information has now been found about his family, the events of the last year of his life and an unprecedented correspondence from his father-in-law, the chemist and academician Jules Pelouze, describing Marcé's condition during the last month of his life. All of these point towards a diagnosis of melancholy, for which none of the appropriate measures were taken, probably as a result of the ailing Marcé's social situation.