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

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

. 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: * De Clerambaul ...

. He is also the pioneer of

forensic psychiatry Forensic psychiatry is a subspeciality 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 psychiat ...

, 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 Communes of France, commune in the Indre-et-Loire Departments of France, department in central France. Population See also *Communes of the Indre-et-Loire department References

Communes of Indre-et-Loire ...

(

Indre-et-Loire Indre-et-Loire () is a department in west-central France named after the Indre River and Loire River The Loire (, also ; ; oc, Léger, ; la, Liger) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it ...

), into a poor farming family. He was poorly educated, which he felt handicapped his career.Semelaigne, p. 188
He studied medicine in

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities 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 ...

, then in Paris where he was a student of

Philippe Pinel Philippe Pinel (; 20 April 1745 – 25 October 1826) was a French physician, precursor of psychiatry and incidentally a zoologist. He was instrumental in the development of a more humane psychological approach to the custody and care of ps ...

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 abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era. Biological psychopatholo ...

. 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 that ...

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

erotomania Erotomania, also known as de Clérambault's Syndrome, named after French people, French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, is listed in the DSM-5 as a subtype of a delusional disorder. It is a relatively uncommon paranoia, paranoid cond ...

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

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

Académie Nationale de Médecine Situated at 16 Rue Bonaparte in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the Académie nationale de médecine (National Academy of Medicine) was created in 1820 by King Louis XVIII at the urging of baron Antoine Portal. At its inception, the instituti ...

and of the

Medical Society of London The Medical Society of London is one of the oldest surviving medical societies (being organisations of voluntary association, rather than regulation or training) in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1773 by the Quaker physician and philanthrop ...

. 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 Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in w ...

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''. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic ...

, 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 ) 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 Museum o ...

''.

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 Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

* (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