The French Approach to Psychiatric Classification

Abstract

It is common knowledge that the French school of psychiatry began with Pinel (1745–1826) at the end of the 18th century. Pinel is credited with having delivered the insane from their chains in the two hospitals of Paris where they were detained, Bicêtre and la Salpêtrière: his near contemporaries in the humanization of the treatment of the insane were Tuke in England, Chiarugi in Tuscany and Daquin in Savoy. Pinel's essential achievement was the creation of the 19th-century French tradition in psychiatry, encompassing the medical, clinical, descriptive and nosological fields. Pinel's breadth of outlook was shared by his pupil Esquirol (1772–1840), who dominated the so-called ‘classical’ school of the ‘Alienists of the Salpêtrière’ via his numerous disciples and his treatise, published in 1838, Des Maladies Mentales Considérées sous le Rapports Médical, Hygiénique et Médicol-légal.