IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB821220351

Félida, Doubled Personality, and the ‘Normal State’ in Late 19th-Century French Psychology (2021)

Hajek, Kim M. (Author)

History of the Human Sciences
Volume: 34
Issue: 2
Pages: 66-89
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

DOI: 10.1177/0952695120980648

URI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695120980648

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Psychopathology Normality Psychology 19th century France Azam, Eugène

The case of Félida X and her ‘doubled personality’ served in the last quarter of the 19th century as a proving ground for a distinctively French form of psychology that bore the stamp of physiology, including the comparative term normal state. Debates around Félida’s case provided the occasion for reflection about how that term and its opposites could take their places in the emerging discursive field of psychopathology. This article centres its analysis on Eugène Azam’s 1876–77 study of Félida, and the ways his framing of the case was adopted or critiqued by subsequent researchers. Azam initially deployed the label normal state in a routine manner, in contrast to his use of condition seconde to designate Félida’s other state; this pairing served, I argue, to anchor the scientific legitimacy of Félida’s extraordinary psychological manifestations. Unpacking the conceptual associations of Azam’s use of normal state, we find it marked as qualitatively distinct, temporally fixed, and most of all individualized; this without becoming normative. It was only through responses to and criticism of Azam’s study that there emerged a more generalized sense of normality against which pathological (hysteric) subjects’ comportment could be contrasted. Félida’s case itself constitutes a highly individualized reconfiguration of the concept of a normal state, while the subsequent framing of doubled mental states provides a valuable vantage point from which to consider the articulations between the language of emerging French psychology and its evolving subjects of enquiry.

...More

Included in

Article Peter Cryle; Elizabeth Stephens (2021) Normality: A Collection of Essays. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-8). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB821220351

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Mauricio V Daker; (2019)
The theory of symptom complexes, mind and madness (/p/isis/citation/CBB264539507/)

Article Le Maléfan, Pascal; Sommer, Andreas; (2015)
Léon Marillier and the Veridical Hallucination in Late-Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century French Psychology and Psychopathology (/p/isis/citation/CBB001553604/)

Article Pietro Terzi; (2021)
The synthesis of consciousness and the latent life of the mind: Philosophy, psychopathology, and ‘cryptopsychism’ in fin-de-siècle France (/p/isis/citation/CBB644527756/)

Article Bacopoulos-Viau, Alexandra; (2012)
Automatism, Surrealism and the Making of French Psychopathology: The Case of Pierre Janet (/p/isis/citation/CBB001251911/)

Article Kim M. Hajek; (2020)
Periodical Amnesia and Dédoublement in Case-Reasoning: Writing Psychological Cases in Late 19th-Century France (/p/isis/citation/CBB193345504/)

Article Roth, Michael S.; (1989)
Remembering forgetting: Maladies de la mémoire in 19th-century France (/p/isis/citation/CBB000048011/)

Article Peter Cryle; Elizabeth Stephens; (2021)
Normality: A Collection of Essays (/p/isis/citation/CBB959369497/)

Article Donna Tafreshi; (2022)
Adolphe Quetelet and the legacy of the “average man” in psychology (/p/isis/citation/CBB333634470/)

Article Sabine Arnaud; (2021)
Le sauvage, le sourd-muet et l’enfant ordinaire (/p/isis/citation/CBB607441423/)

Article Stephanie L. Schatz; (2015)
Lewis Carroll’s Dream-child and Victorian Child Psychopathology (/p/isis/citation/CBB058347482/)

Book Wittmann, Barbara; (2009)
Spuren erzeugen: Zeichnen und Schreiben als Verfahren der Selbstaufzeichnung (/p/isis/citation/CBB001231893/)

Article Alm, Torbjørn; Elvevåg, Brita; (2013)
Ergotism in Norway. Part 2: The Symptoms and Their Interpretation from the Eighteenth Century Onwards (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320326/)

Chapter Schott, Heinz; (2009)
“Born Criminals,” “Degenerates” and “Psychopaths”: On the History of Criminal Psychology in Germany (/p/isis/citation/CBB001031962/)

Article José I Pérez Revuelta; José M Villagrán Moreno; (2021)
Moreau de Tours: organicism and subjectivity. Part 2: Moreau as psychopathologist (/p/isis/citation/CBB912675190/)

Article Jose I Pérez Revuelta; Jose M Villagrán Moreno; (2021)
Moreau de Tours: organicism and subjectivity. Part 1: Life and work (/p/isis/citation/CBB757360111/)

Article Kumazaki, Tsutomu; (2013)
The Theoretical Root of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology. Part 2: The Influence of Max Weber (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320333/)

Article Kumazaki, Tsutomu; (2013)
The Theoretical Root of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology. Part 1: Reconsidering the Influence of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320331/)

Article David W Jones; (2017)
Moral insanity and psychological disorder: the hybrid roots of psychiatry (/p/isis/citation/CBB830638113/)

Article Enric J. Novella; (2018)
Alexandre Brierre De Boismont and the Limits of the Psychopathological Gaze (/p/isis/citation/CBB543407378/)

Article Priest, Robert D.; (2013)
“After the God and the Man, the Patient”: Jules Soury's Psychopathology of Jesus and the Boundaries of the Science of Religions in the Early Third Republic (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201416/)