O pensamento psiquiátrico de G. G. de Clérambault: das Psicoses tóxicas ao Automatismo mental

Abstract

Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872-1934) was a French psychiatrist who worked over his thirty professional years at the Special Infirmary of the Paris Police Prefecture. He developed several important researches there – some even were considered as novelty at that time – mainly concerning toxic psychoses, Erotomania and his concepts of Mental Automatism. Although contemporary of Freud, Clérambault remained with his organicist ideas influenced by mechanistic thinking, understanding hallucination as a mechanical phenomenon upon which delusion is constituted. Clérambault was an obstinate misogynist, a conservative person and hostile to Freudianism and Surrealism. Due to these aspects, just after his tragic death his personal life became an object of greater public interest than his own work. Initially considered as an anachronistic and marginal thinker – essentially because his narrow constitutionalism – the interest in his academic works has returned after references made by his former student Jacques Lacan. Thereafter, Clérambault reached a relevant place in the psychoanalytic environment (predominantly among Lacanians). This PhD Dissertation aims to reanalyse his work through a literature review. The general assumption is that the rediscovery of his psychiatric work has been strongly biased by Lacan’s idiosyncratic psychoanalytic thinking. Hence, the purpose of this work is not only identifying the distortions that his works might have undergone, but especially recapture the original principles of his thinking and prevent his valuable contributions from being lost to contemporaneity. Clérambault’s works are used as primary data sources, while publications regarding his works and his life are used as secondary sources. As a result, this PhD Dissertation aims to show that those deviations in the original Clérambault’s thinking did not decrease its relevance in the History of Psychiatry.