IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB000831764

Montpellier Vitalism and the Emergence of Alienism in France (1750--1800): The Case of the Passions (2008)

Huneman, Philippe (Author)

Science in Context
Volume: 21
Pages: 615--647
Publication date: 2008
Language: English

Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Part of a special issue on “Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment”

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Mental disorders and diseases Vitalism Emotions; passions 18th century France Pinel, Philippe Esquirol, Jean Étienne Dominique Université de Montpellier

This paper considers how certain ideas elaborated by the Montpellier vitalists influenced the rise of French alienism, and how those ideas framed the changing view of passions during the eighteenth century. Various kinds of evidence attest that the passions progressively became the focus of medical attention, rather than a theme specific to moralists and philosophers. Vitalism conceived of organisms as animal economies understandable through the transformations of the various modes of their sensibility. This allowed some physicians to define a kind of anthropological program, which viewed human beings as a whole, with no distinction between le physique and le moral. The passions in this context became a specific alteration of the animal economy. Such an anthropological program was the framework within which Pinel understood the various classes of madness as disease -- those troubles being general disturbances of the animal economy, which presupposed a knowledge of the latter, to be addressed and cured. In this view, and departing from the vitalist writers with regard to the specificity of mental illness as such, Pinel proposed another conception of the relations between passions and madness, and elaborated a general view of their status in etiology and therapeutics; those views were taken up and systematized by Esquirol, who finally defined a new kind of continuity between passion and madness, demonstrated by the idea that some kinds of madness that he called monomania had as a principle a ruling passion that the alienist, this novel medical specialist, had to unveil and address.

...More

Description Focuses especially on Philippe Pinel and his understanding of the relationship between madness and the passions.

Included in

Article Wolfe, Charles T. (2008) Introduction: Vitalism without Metaphysics? Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment. Science in Context (p. 461). unapi

Citation URI

stagingisis.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB000831764

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Philippe Huneman; (2017)
From a religious view of madness to religious mania: the Encyclopédie, Pinel, Esquirol

Article Waisse, Silvia; Amaral, Maria Thereza Cera Galvão do; Alfonso-Goldfarb, Ana M.; (2011)
Raízes do vitalismo francês: Bordeu e Barthez, entre Paris e Montpellier

Article Williams, Elizabeth A.; (2010)
Stomach and Psyche: Eating, Digestion, and Mental Illness in the Medicine of Philippe Pinel

Thesis Normandin, Sebastien; (2006)
Visions of Vitalism: Medicine, Philosophy and the Soul in Nineteenth Century France

Article Kaitaro, Timo; (2008)
Can Matter Mark the Hours? Eighteenth-Century Vitalist Materialism and Functional Properties

Article Witt, Elke; (2008)
Form---A Matter of Generation: The Relation of Generation, Form, and Function in the Epigenetic Theory of Caspar F. Wolff

Article Wolfe, Charles T.; (2008)
Introduction: Vitalism without Metaphysics? Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment

Article Williams, Elizabeth A.; (2008)
Of Two Lives One? Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud and the Question of Holism in Vitalist Medicine

Article Wolfe, Charles T.; Terada, Motoichi; (2008)
The Animal Economy as Object and Program in Montpellier Vitalism

Article Boury, Dominique; (2008)
Irritability and Sensibility: Key Concepts in Assessing the Medical Doctrines of Haller and Bordeu

Book Laure Murat; (2014)
The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Toward a Political History of Madness

Article Yohan Trichet; Agnès Lacroix; (2016)
Esquirol’s change of view towards Pinel’s mania without delusion

Chapter Weiner, Dora B.; (1990)
Mind and body in the clinic: Philippe Pinel, Alexander Crichton, Dominique Esquirol, and the birth of psychiatry

Chapter Salmón, Fernando; (2011)
From Patient to Text? Narratives of Pain and Madness in Medical Scholasticism

Article Huertas, Rafael; (2008)
Between Doctrine and Clinical Practice: Nosography and Semiology in the Work of Jean-Etienne-Dominique Esquirol (1772--1840)

Thesis Dodman, Thomas W.; (2011)
Homesick Epoch: Dying of Nostalgia in Post-Revolutionary France

Article Guiroy, Jean-Yves; (2006)
Quand Esquirol écrivait au sous-préfet de Foix “Hautes Pyrénées”

Article Gourévitch, Michel; (2006)
Obsession-impulsion infanticide

Article Livesey, James; (2005)
Botany and Provincial Enlightenment in Montpellier: Antoine Banal Père and Fils 1750--1800

Article Lohff, Brigitte; (1997)
Die Rezeption der Werke Johann Georg Zimmermanns in Montpellier