PINEL Philippe Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale ou la Manie.

Garrison-Morton, 4922 ; Norman (Grolier), 54 ; Norman cat., 1701 ; Waller, 7456.

Édition originale.

Le texte capital du fondateur de la psychiatrie moderne.

Il fut rédigé en 1792, mais les événements politiques en retardèrent la publication.

Grâce à Pinel, les malades mentaux commencèrent à être traités plus humainement. Sans rôle actif pendant la Révolution Française, Pinel soigna les proscrits et compta Condorcet parmi ses patients.

“In 1795 Pinel became chief physician at the Salpêtrière, where he founded that institution’s famous school of psychiatry. There he trained a generation of psychiatrists, the most important being Esquirol, who disseminated his ideas throughout Europe” (Norman).

“Pinel’s classification of mental diseases retained the old divisions of such illnesses as manic, melancholic, demented and idiotic… He nevertheless made finer distinctions, isolating mania from delirium, and pointing out that in this state the intellectual functions might be intact, and, in his description of idiocy, citing stupor, the first stage of some types of mental disease… Pinel’s psychiatric therapeutics, his ‘traitement moral’, represented the first attempt to individual psychotherapy. His treatment was marked by gentleness, understanding, and goodwill… A number oc Pinel’s therapeutic procedures, including ergotherapy and the placement of the patient in a family group, anticipate modern psychiatric care” (DSB).

Faibles rousseurs, très éparses.

Agréable exemplaire en reliure d’époque.