PMID: 11618728Dec 1, 1996Paper

Back to the future: Valentin Magnan, French psychiatry, and the classification of mental diseases, 1885-1925

Social History of Medicine : the Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine
I Dowbiggin

Abstract

To this day one of the most curious gaps in the historiography of French psychiatry is the era between the fin-de-siècle and the 1920s, years that overlapped the life and career of Valentin Magnan (1835-1916), a pivotal figure in the historical classification of mental diseases. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming as well as contribute to the growing scholarly interest in the history of clinical psychiatry. It argues that Magnan was in many ways a tragic figure, someone who lived and worked at a time when circumstances conspired against him and his efforts to reform psychiatric classification. Essentially Magnan had the misfortune to practise psychiatry when Emil Kraepelin's influence began to spread beyond Germany's borders, sparking a nationalist reaction that penalized both French Kraepelinians and Magnan whose theories shared similarities with Kraepelin's. But Magnan's stature also suffered because of the intense internecine quarrels that arose in late nineteenth-century French psychiatry. Magnan was no helpless victim, though, and there is reason to believe that some of the criticism directed at him was based on documented personal failings. Ultimately, Magnan's theory of psychiatric classification was overtaken b...Continue Reading

Citations

Nov 6, 2007·International Journal of Epidemiology·Martijn HuismanJohan Mackenbach
May 26, 2006·Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy·Stephan A PadoschLars U Kröner
Feb 9, 2010·Australasian Psychiatry : Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists·Robert M Kaplan
Apr 29, 2009·History of Psychiatry·José Javier Plumed Domingo
Sep 11, 2008·Australasian Psychiatry : Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists·Robert M Kaplan
Sep 1, 2011·History of Psychiatry·Jesper Vaczy Kragh
Feb 23, 2018·Journal of the History of the Neurosciences·Paul Eling, Alla Vein

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