« Les paroles s’envolent, les écrits restent ». Traces ordinaires de psychopathes internés à Cery

Abstract

Since its inception at the end of the 19th century, the diagnosis of psychopathy has carried with it negative representations tending to disqualify from the outset the persons thus designated. Dangerous, perverse, manipulative: in the eyes of doctors, the psychopath is a lucid and unamenable “half-crazy” person who does not belong in a psychiatric hospital. However, the identity confinement resulting from such considerations opens a real field of confrontation. The files of patients at the Cery Hospital, near Lausanne, reveal the struggles of some inmates to assert their identity and maintain control over their existence. A ground-level history of “ordinary” psychopathic figures, far from the famous cases, reveals the gap that can exist between representations and concrete files, but also the weight of the diagnosis on the evaluation of lives and individual trajectories.

Keywords

• psychiatry
• psychopath
• internment
• personal writings
• Canton of Vaud