Étienne-Jean Georget (2 April 1795 – 14 May 1828) was a French

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...

. He is known for writing on

monomania In 19th-century psychiatry, monomania (from Greek , "one", and , meaning "madness" or "frenzy") was a form of partial insanity conceived as single psychological obsession in an otherwise sound mind. Types Monomania may refer to: * Erotomania ( ...

. He is also the pioneer of

forensic psychiatry Forensic psychiatry is a subspecialty of psychiatry and is related to criminology. It encompasses the interface between law and psychiatry. According to the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, it is defined as "a subspecialty of psychiatr ...

, and was the first psychiatrist to discuss the defence of insanity to criminal charges.

Biography

Georget was born in

Vernou-sur-Brenne Vernou-sur-Brenne () is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France. Population See also *Communes of the Indre-et-Loire department The following is a list of the 272 communes of the Indre-et-Loire department of France ...

(

Indre-et-Loire Indre-et-Loire () is a department in west-central France named after the Indre River and Loire River. In 2019, it had a population of 610,079.Semelaigne, p. 188
He studied medicine in

Tours Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...

, then in Paris where he was a student of Philippe Pinel and

Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol (3 February 1772 – 12 December 1840) was a French psychiatrist. Early life and education Born and raised in Toulouse, Esquirol completed his education at Montpellier. He came to Paris in 1799 where he worked a ...

. From 1815 he worked at the Salpêtrière hospital. In 1820 he attained fame with his book ''De la folie'' ("On insanity"). Georget specialized in

psychopathology Psychopathology is the study of mental illness. It includes the signs and symptoms of all mental disorders. The field includes Abnormal psychology, abnormal cognition, maladaptive behavior, and experiences which differ according to social norms ...

. He refined and clarified Pinel's

nosology Nosology () is the branch of medical science that deals with the classification of diseases. Fully classifying a medical condition requires knowing its cause (and that there is only one cause), the effects it has on the body, the symptoms th ...

of mental illnesses. He distinguished several types of monomania such as "theomania" (religious obsession), "

erotomania Erotomania, also known as de Clérambault's syndrome, is a relatively uncommon paranoia, paranoid condition that is characterized by an individual's delusions of another person being infatuation, infatuated with them. It is listed in the DSM-5 as ...

" (sexual obsession), "demonomania" (obsession with evil) and "homicidal monomania" (obsession with murder). He also held the view that it is possible for criminals to be held legally responsible for their crimes by reason of insanity. Georget ridiculed the idea of the uterine origin of

hysteria Hysteria is a term used to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, female hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that the bas ...

and maintained that it was a disease of men as well as women. He was a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine and of the

Medical Society of London Medicine is the science and practice of caring for patients, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

. The theoretical work of Georget was influential in establishing the view that 19th century writers of romantic fiction took of the insane and of criminals. Georget died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 33.

The Géricault portraits

In the early 1820s, he commissioned

Théodore Géricault Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a French painter and lithographer, whose best-known painting is '' The Raft of the Medusa''. Despite his short life, he was one of the pioneers of the Romanti ...

, a former patient, to paint a series of portraits so that his students could study the facial traits of "monomaniacs", as he preferred using such images to having patients in the classroom. Between 1821 and 1824, Géricault created ten paintings, of which five have survived. They include those of a kidnapper, a gambling addict, and a woman "consumed with envy". The most famous is ''

Portrait of a kleptomaniac ''Portrait of a Kleptomaniac'' or ''Portrait of an Insane Person'' ( or aka ) is an 1822 oil painting by Théodore Géricault. It is part of series of ten portraits made for the psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget and is currently kept in the M ...

''.

Works

Books

* (1820) (On insanity) ** Postel, Jacques (ed.). ''De la folie''. Toulouse: Privat (1972) * ''De la physiologie du système nerveux et spécialement du cerveau: recherches sur les maladies nerveuses en général, et en particulier sur le siége, la nature et le traitement de lʹhystérie, de lʹhypochondrie, de l'épilepsie et de lʹasthme convulsif'' (1821
Volume 1
on

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

* (1825) *
Discussion médico-légale sur la folie ou aliénation mentale, suivie de l'examen du procès criminel d'Henriette Cornier, et de plusieurs autres procès dans lesquels cette maladie a été alléguée comme moyen de défense
' on Gallica (1826) *
Des maladies mentales, considérées dans leurs rapports avec la législation civile et criminelle
' (1827) (On mental diseases, considered in relation with civil and criminal laws) * (1828) (New forensic discussion on insanity or mental alienation, followed by an examination of a number of criminal trials where that disease was used as a means of defense) A more complete list can be found in Semelaigne.

Dictionary articles (selection)

* Articles in Adelon, Nicolas Philibert (ed.). ''Dictionnaire de médecine''. Paris: Béchet jeune: "Délire"; "Folie"; "Hystérie"; "Névrose"

References

* Foucault, Michel.
L'évolution de la notion d'"individu dangereux" dans la psychiatrie légale
. ''Déviance et société''. 1981, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 403–422 . (Foucault finds it strange that people who have confessed to their crimes are nevertheless asked to provide a rationale for them—that poses a problem for the insane who are sure about the facts but unsure about the motives.There is an error in the document (p. 405): the date was not 1927.) * Kern, Stephen
''A cultural history of causality''
(esp. p. 247) * Micale, Mark S. . 2008, pp. 65–68. * Postel, Jacques.
Eléments pour une histoire de la psychiatrie occidentale
'. 2007 * Semelaigne, René.
Georget (Etienne-Jean)
, ''Les pionniers de la psychiatrie française avant et après Pinel'', vol. 1, p. 188. 1930 {{DEFAULTSORT:Georget, Etienne-Jean French psychiatrists 1795 births 1828 deaths People from Indre-et-Loire 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in France