Summary:
Psychiatric science will be born in the historical context of the French Revolution, which, putting matters of freedom and equality, and above all, matters of individual rights and limits of individual freedom, it profoundly changes the previous perception about the individual. The “lunatic” is no more dealt as an irrational being that due to his/her condition, is closer to the animal than the human and is now described from the early french psychiatrists-alienists-therapists as "mentally alienated", which needs therapy and has hope of being healed. The present paper attempts to follow the evolution of psychiatrization of the french society since the end of the 18th and throughout the 19th century. Furthermore using as an analytical tool the gender for the most part, it explores the construction of a paternalistic psychiatric discourse, which was established then, helping to strengthen a prejudice that often considers, even till today, every woman as potentially lunatic.
In the first chapter, a short going back in the madness treatments before the emergence of modern psychiatry is being attempted, the relations with the relative sciences of neurology and phrenology is being examined, the philosophical background is being searched through the analysis of her nomenclature, and the way of constructing the psychiatric authority is being investigated. In the second chapter the french law- model of 1838, which affected the whole Europe, is being analysed in the general context of an "ethical psychiatric culture" that was constantly expanding, invading even in the criminal justice. In the third chapter the theory of degeneration, which has influenced scientific thinking and socio-political developments in general, is being examined. In the fourth chapter the woman and the dead-end of the bourgeoisie regarding her sexuality, is being analysed, making her a "no absorbed psychiatric subject". The institution of asylum and the life therein are also examined through the example of incarcerated women and the application of "moral treatment", which results as a treatment of morality. In the fifth chapter through the examples of two persons "socially inadjustable" who are described as mad, the psychiatric arbitrariness, the illegal incarceration, the psychiatry's position concerning the revolutions and its frequent embracement with politics, is being investigated. In the sixth chapter the interaction of psychiatry and intellect, as well as the experiments of early 19th-century french psychiatrists that had as a purpose, besides the understanding of the causes of madness and its cure, the "discovery" of the limits of human psyche and the potential relationship between genius and madness is also being investigated. The epilogue attempts to abridge some conclusions of all the above.
