Portraits du dégénéré en fou, en primitif, en enfant etfinalement en artiste

Abstract

This article deals with the concept of «degeneration», introduced by Benedict-Auguste Morel in the French psychiatry during the 1850s, and which widely spread afterwards, in this field as well as in the contemporary criminology. An analysis is tried of the changes imposed by this notion on the psychiatric knowledge, changes that resulted in the integration in a coherent system of three other paradigms: a neurological paradigm, a theory of pathological automatism, a certain kind of evolutionary theory. The author then tries to establish the existence of background similarities between the psychiatric and criminological theories of degeneration, namely in as much as they promote the same «structural» analogies between the various forms of abnormality (the madman, the primitive, the woman, the child, the animal); and it is shown that these theories also imply a logic in which all the transgressions of the different kinds of norms (biological, social, moral, juridical, psychological, economical) tend to be systematically referred to one another, and translated into one another. Then a sketch is given of the changes imposed by this paradigm to the principles of therapy and pedagogy for the insane persons. And finally the author presents some of the themes that, in this paradigm, already prepare its deconstruction to come.

Keywords

• atavism
• automatism
• degeneration
• education
• evolution
• heredity