No More Learning

At the end of this kind of great battle between the neurologist and the hysteric, around the clinical apparatus of n euro pathology, a new body appears beneath the apparently captured neurological body,* beneath the body that the neurologist hoped and believed he had really captured in truth. This new body is no longer the neurological body; it is the sexual body. It is the hysteric who imposes this new personage on neurologists and doctors, which is no longer the pathological-anatomical body of Laennec and Bichat, the disciplinary body of psychiatry, or the neurological body of Duchenne de Boulogne or Charcot, but the sexual body, confronted with which henceforth only two attitudes were possible.
Either there is the attitude of Charcot's successor, Babinski, which consists in a retrospective devaluation of hysteria, which, since it has these connotations, will no longer be an illness. 67' Or there is a new attempt to circumvent the maneuver of hysterical encirclement, so as to give a medical meaning to this new course that loomed up on all sides around the neurological body fabricated by the doctors. This new investment will be the medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic take over of sexuality.
By breaking down the door of the asylum, by ceasing to be mad so as to become patients, by finally getting through to a true doctor, that is to say, the neurologist, and by providing him with genuine functional symptoms, the hysterics, to their greater pleasure, but doubtless to our greater misfortune, gave rise to a medicine of sexuality.
* Manuscript variant: "and by which one wanted to judge madness, to question it in truth . . . "
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1. "If I have succeeded in putting the works relating to the morbid anatomy ol the nervous centers in their true light, you will not have (ailed to recognize the main tendency which becomes more pronounced in all these works. All seem, in some way, dominated by what we could call the spirit of localization, which is in fact only an ollshoot of the spirit of analysis" J. -M. Charcot, "Faculte de Medecine dc Paris: Anatomo-pathologie du systeme nerveux," Progres medical, 71'1 year, no. 14, 5 April 1879, p. 161.
2. On Bichat, see above note }8 to the lecture ol 9 January 1974.
3. On Laennec, see ibid. From 1803, Laennec gave a private course ol pathological
anatomy, which he wanted to make into a separate discipline. He put lorward an anatomical-pathological classification ol organic affections derived from, but more com plete than that ol Bichat; see, "Anatomie palhologicjue," in Didionnaire des sciences medicates, vol. II (Paris: C. L. F. Panckoucke, 1812) pp. 46-61. See the chapter Foucatilt devotes to pathological anatomy, "[. 'invisible visible" in Naissance de la clinique, pp. 151-176; The Birth oj the Clinic, ch. 9, "The Visible Invisible" pp. 149-173.
4. This is the observation ol I. N. , eighteen years old, suffering from ptosis of the lelt eyelid, presented at the consultation of 18 February 1891. See J. M. Charcot, Clinique des maladies du systeme nerveux (7##9-7#9/), Lectures edited by C. Guinon, Lecture of 24 February 1891 (recorded by A. Souques), vol. I (Paris: Aux bureaux du Progres medical/Vw Babe, 1892) p. 332.
5. On the "anatomical clinical gaze" see Naissance de la clinique, ch. 8, "Ouvrez quelques cadavres," pp. 136-142, and ch. 9, "L'invisible visible," pp. 164-172; The Birth of the Clinic, ch. 8, "Open Up a Few Corpses," pp. 124-148, and ch. 9, "The Visible Invisible," pp. 149-173.
6. Ibid. , ch. 6, "Des signes et des cas"; ibid. , ch. 6, "Signs and Cases. "
7. Foucault is relernng to the clinical mode of examination by "percussion" lor which Jean Nicolas Corvisart (1755-1821) became the advocate after translating and annotating the work of the Viennese Leopold Auenbrugger (1722-1809): Invenlum novum ex percussione thoracis humani ul signo abstrusos inlerni pecloris morhos delegendi ( Vindobonae: Typis Joannis Thomas Trattner, 1761; French translation, Nouvelle melhode pour reconnaitre les maladies internes de la poitrine par la percussion de cette cavite, trans, and commentary J. N. Corvisart
(Paris: Migneret, 1 8 0 8 ) ) . In September 1816 Laennec perfected the stethoscope at the Necker hospital; see R. T. H. Laennec, De I'auscultation mediate; A Treatise on Mediate
Auscultation.
8. As a result of numerous works, including those of the physiologist Francois Magendie (1783-1855) in 1826, which resorted to electrical stimulation in order to study the mech anisms of nervous excitation and muscular contraction, G. B. A. Duchenne de Boulogne used "Faradization" to explore the excitability of muscles and nerves and to establish the diagnosis and treatment of their affections. He set out the results m a first paper presented in 1847 to the Academie des sciences: (1) "De l'art de limiter l'action electrique dans les organes, nouvelle methode d'electrisation appelee 'electrisation localisee,' " republished in Archives generates de medecine,)u\y and August 1850, and February and March 1851. In 1850 he set out in a second report a method of "galvanization" using continuous currents with the aim of studying muscular functions and providing the means for "a differential diag nosis of paralyses": ( 2 ) Application de la galvanisation localisee a /'elude desJondions muscu/aires (Paris: J. B. Baillierc, 1851). All these works were brought together in one work: ( 3 ) De /'electrisation localisee el de son application a la physiologie, a la pathologie et a la therapeulique (Paris: J. B. Bailliere, 1855). See also above, note 61 to lecture of 30 January 1974, and R. A. Adams, "A. Duchenne" in W. Haymaker and F. Schiller, eds. The Founders of Neurology, vol. 2 (Springfield, 111. :C. C. Thomas, 1970) pp. 430-435.
9. Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880), surgeon at Bicetre, presented a note to the Paris Societe d'Anthropologie on 18 April 1861: (1) "Remarques sur le siege de la faculte du langage articule, suivies d'une observation d'aphemie (perte de la parole)" concerning a patient, Leborgne, hospitalized at Bicetre for twenty one years, who had recently lost the use of speech and could now only pronounce the syllabic "tan" repeated twice. Transferred into Broca's department on 11 April 1861, where he died on 17 April, his autopsy revealed a center of softening of the foot of the third left frontal convolution, to which Broca
? 10.
11. 12.
13. 14-
15. 16.
17.
18.
attributed the loss of articulated speech; see Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris, 1M series, vol. II, August 1861, pp. 330-357, republished in H. Hccaen and J. Dubois, La Naissance de la neurophysiologie du langage, 1826-1&65 (Paris: Flammanon, 1969) pp. 61-91. Between 1861 and 1865, further observations confirmed to Broca the role of the third lett convolution: see ( 2 ) "Localisation des lonctions cerebralcs. Siege du lanage articule," Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris, Tx series, vol. IV, 186}, pp. 200-204, and (3) "Sur le siege de la laculte du langage articule," ibid. 1M series, vol. VI, 1865, pp. 577-393, republished in H. Hecaen and J. Dubois, La Naissance de la neurophysiologie du langage, pp. 108-123.
To Duchenne de Boulogne we owe the description of "progressive locomotor ataxia" or tabes dorsalis, of syphilitic origin, characterized by lack ol motor coordination and usually accompanied by abolition of the reflexes and deep sensibility: see, "De I'ataxie locomolrice progressive," republished in De I'ataxie locomotrice progressive (Paris: Rignoux, 1859).
G. B. A. Duchenne, Diagnostic differentiel des ajjeclions cerebelleuses el de I'ataxie locomotrice progressive (extract Irom La Gazelle hehdomadairc de medecine el de chirurgie, 1864) (Paris: Martinet, 1864).
Ibid. p. 5: "When the man begins to feel the eHects of alcoholic intoxication, his body, in the upright position, sways in every direction (. . . ). In subjects struck by locomotor ataxia, the body's oscillations, in an upright position, have a very dillerent character; they are abrupt, shorter and more rapid, whereas those ol drunkenness resemble a sort ol swaying.
I have already compared the upright ataxic to a dancer who wants to keep his balance on a taut wire. " See G. B. A. Duchenne, De I'ataxie locomotrice progressive, p. 78: "To a certain extent the patient can be compared to an individual who is trying with difficulty to keep his balance on a stretched wire without a balancing pole. "
G. B. A. Duchenne, Diagnostic difjerenliel des affections cerebelleuses, pp. 5-6.
Ibid. p. 6: "The man who is drunk (. . . ) walks making alternative curves to the lelt and right, or zigzags, and cannot go straight ahead ( . . . ) . The ataxic ( . . . ) usually walks straight ahead unsteadily, but without making curves or zigzags like the drunken man. " Ibid. p. 7: "I asked them if, standing upright or walking ( . . . ) they did not (eel the head heavy or turn, as when one has drunk too much wine or spirits. They answered that their head was completely Iree, and that they only lacked balance in the legs" (author's emphasis). Foucault is relerring to the analyses put lorward by Broca in his 1861 article: "Remarques sur le siege de la laculte du langage articule," in which he proposed the term "aphemie" (see above, note 9) to designate this loss of the "faculty of articulating words" in H. Hccaen and J. Dubois, La Naissance de la neurophysiologie du langage, p. 63-
Anarthria is a motor aphasia linked to an affection of the Broca area, situated on the external lace of the dominant cerebral hemisphere, at the lower part of the third frontal convolution. Characterized by disorders ol the articulation of speech, without lesions ol the phonatory organs, it was described by Pierre Marie (1853-1940) in "De l'aphasie (cecite verbale, surdite verbale, aphasie motrice, agraphie)," Revue du medecine, vol. Ill, 1883, pp. 693-702.
As testifies the use of the term "hystero epilepsy" to designate a hybrid form (composed ol hysteria and epilepsy) marked by convulsive crises, as states J. B. Lodois Bnffaut: "We see the hysteric becoming epileptic, remaining both the one and the other, which constitutes hystero-epilepsy, or epilepsy increasingly dominating, and suppressing, as it were, the original hysteria" Rapports de I'hysterie et de I'epilepsie, Medical Thesis, Paris, no. 146 (Paris: 1851) p. 24. See E. J. Georget--according to whom hysteria is a convulsive nervous disorder that forms a continuum with epilepsy--the article "Hystene," in Dictionnaire de medecine, vol. 11 (Paris: Bechet Jeune, 1824) pp. 526-551- On the confusion of epilepsy with other "convulsive disorders," see O. Temkin, The Falling Sickness: A Story of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore, Md. : The Johns Hopkins Press, 119451 1971, 2na revised edition) pp. 351-359.
Foucault takes two dates as reference points:
(1) 1820, the year in which the debate on the causes of madness begins on the occasion of Etienne Georget's defence of his thesis, 8 February 1820: "Dissertation sur les causes de la folie" (see above, note 18 to lecture of 12 December 1973). Published in January 1843 by J. Baillarger, L. Cense and F. Longet, the Annales medico-psychologiques. Journal de
19.
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/'anatomic, de la physiologic ct tie la pathologic du sysleme nerveux, specifically intended to gather all the documents concerning the relationships between the physical and the moral, mental pathology, legal medicine of the insane, and clinical neuroses (Paris, Fort in and Masson), was the site for an almost permanent debate on the organic and moral causes ol madness, with a significant moment in the 1840s which saw conflict with the supporters of organicism, such as (a) L. Rostan, author oi Exposition des principes de Vor- gancisme, precedee de reflexions sur Vincredulitc en matiere de medecine (Paris: Asselin, 1846); ( b ) A. |de( Foville, author, with J. B. Delaye, of a paper lor the Prix Escjuirol in 1821, "Sur les causes de la fohe et leur mode d'action, suivies de recherches sur la nature et le siege special de cette maladie," Nouveau Journal de medecine, vol. XII, October 1821, pp. 110 sq. \ as well as G. Ferrus, and L. Calmed; | c | J J .
Moreau de Tours, who on 9 June 1830, delended a thesis entitled: De Vinjluencc du physique, relativement an desordre des facultes inlel- lecluclles, el en parliculier dans cette variete de delire designee par M. Esquirol sous le nom de Monomanic, Paris Medical Thesis, no. 127 (Paris: Didot, 1830) taking up the terms "organicism," and "organicist" as a banner--and the partisans of the pscyhological school, who preferred to be called "dualists": P. N. Gerdy, Frederic Dubois d'Amiens (1799-1873), C. Michea, Louis Francois Emile Renaudin (1808-1865). As well as ( d ) J . B. Parchappe de Vinay, author ol an article entitled precisely "De la predominance des causes morales dans la generation de la fohe," Annales medico-psychologiques, vol. II, November 1843, pp. 358-371. And |e| L. F. Lelut, who criticizes the use of pathological anatomy in mental medicine in his Inductions sur la valcur des alterations de Vencephale dans le delire aigu el dans la folie (Paris: Trinquart, 1836).
(n) 1880, when a third organicist wave spreads out with the works ol Magnan and Charcot, who, thinking they have mastered the physiopathology ol the brain, think the time has arrived lor definitive conclusions.
20. On Bayle's conception, see above, note 17 to the lecture ol 12 December 1973, and note 2 to the lecture ol 9january 1974.
21. Against Bayle, who admitted "three orders of essential symptoms belonging to madness, dementia and paralysis," Baillarger maintained that "the essential symptoms ol this illness, those without which it never exists, are ol two orders: those constituted by phenomena of paralysis and the others by phenomena ol dementia," and delirium, when it exists, only "constitutes a completely accessory symptom. " J. Baillarger, "Des symptomes de la paralysie generate et des rapports de cette maladie avec la folie," Appendix to the transla lions of W. Griesinger's Traile, p. 614 and p. 612.
22. "Good illness" or, as Foucault said, " 'good form'. The major structure which governs all perception of madness is exactly represented in the analysis of the psychiatric symp loms of nervous syphilis" Histoire de lajolie, p. 542 (omitted from the English transla tion). Already, in 1955, Henri Ey saw a "prototype" in it having exercised "an invincible power of attraction on psychiatrists" ("Histoire de la psychiatrie" in Encyclopedic medico- chirurgicalc. Psychiatrie, vol. I, 1955, p. 7). This stems from the fact that, just as clinical anatomy is constituted, A. L. J. Bayle isolates an entity in psychiatry corresponding to the medical model (see above, note 17 to the lecture of 12 December 1973): it has a defin- able cause lrom the angle of pathological anatomy, it presents a specific symptomatol ogy, and it has an evolution defined by three periods leading to motor impotence and dementia. On the history of the problem, see J. Baillarger, "De la decouverte de la paralysie generale et des doctrines emises par les premiers auteurs," Annales medico-psy- chologiques, 3rd series, vol. V, October 1859, 1S| part, pp. 509-526, and 3KI series, vol. VI,
January i 8 6 0 , 2,ul part, pp. 1-14.
23. See above, note 1 to the lecture of 30 January 1974.
24. In the 1840s, the basic definition of the neuroses had hardly changed from when the
Scottish doctor William Cullen introduced the term in his Apparatus ad nosologium methodicam, seu Synopsis nosologiae melhodicae, belore it being laid down with the appearance of First Lines of the Practice of Physic, in 4 volumes (Edinburgh: Elliot, 1777) vol. 3, p. 122: "In this place I propose to comprehend, under the title NEUROSES, all those preternatural aflections of the sense or motion which are without pyrexia [lever; J. L. J, as a part of the primary disease; and all those which do not depend upon a topical affection of the organs, but upon a more general affection of the nervous system, and of those powers of the system
? upon which the sense and motion more especially depend"; French translation Elements de medecine pratique, trans, with notes from the 4lh edition, M. Bosquillon (Paris: Barois et Meqiugnon, 1785) vol. II, p. 185. Thus, in 1843, under the rubric "Neuroses," the Introduction to the Anna/es medico-psychologiques, vol. I, January 1843, pp. xxm xxiv, states: "NEUROSES: We see disturbance of the Junctions ol relational life predominating here, as
in the dillerent lorms ol mental alienation. This disorder appears in a thousand ways in hypochondria, hysteria, catalepsy, epilepsy, somnambulism, neuralgia, hyslencism, etcetera (. . . ). Intermediary in some way between disorders ol nutritional liie and mental illnesses, they seem to share two natures. Here a lunctional disorder of organic life com
mands the attack, there an intellectual disorder dominates the paroxysms. " See, ( a ) A. [de] Foville, entry lor "Neuroses" in Dictionnaire de medecine el de chirnrgie pratiques, vol. XII (Paris: Gabon, 1834), pp. 55-57; (b) E. Monneret and L. Fleury, entry for "Neuroses" in Compendiumde medecine pratique, vol. VI (Paris: Bechel, 1845) p. 209; (c) E. Littre and
C. Robin, Dictionnaire de medecine, de chirnrgie, de pkarmacie, des sciences accessoires et de /'art velerinaire (Paris: 1855): "NEUROSIS: generic name tor illnesses whose seat one assumes
is in the nervous system and which consist in a lunctional disorder without perceptible lesion in the structure ol the parts or material agent able to produce it"; and
( d ) J. M. Bruttin, DiJJercnls Theories sur Vhystcric dans la premiere moilie du XIX siecle (Zurich: Juris, 1969).
25. "Introduction" to the Annales medico-psychologiques, vol. I, January 1843, p. xxv.
26. Jules Falret, "La folie raisonnante ou lolie morale" read at the Societe medico
psychologique on 8 January 1866, Annales medico-pschologiques, 4,h series, vol. VII, May 1866: "Another principal lad, basically typical ol hysterics, is the spirit ol duplicity and
lies. These patients ( . . . ) have no greater pleasure than deceiving and leading the people with whom they have relations into error. Hysterics, who exaggerate their convulsive movements (which are often partly simulated), equally misrepresent and exaggerate all the movements ol their soul (. . . ). In short, the life ol hysterics is just a constant lie (. . . )"; reprinted in Etudes cliniqaes sur les maladies mentales el nerveuses (Paris: J. B. Bailliere, 1889), Study II, p. 502.
27. It wasjules Dcjenne who expressed himself in this way in his "Lec. on inaugurale a la clin- ique des maladies du systcme nerveux" on 31 March 1911, La Presse medicale, V1 April, 1911, pp. 253-258: "Through his studies on hysteria, Charcot rescued a domain from the psychi- atrists that the latter vainly tried to regain. Certainly his doctrine of hysteria has not remained wholly intact. But even if Charcot had only the merit of making doctors under- stand that, beyond material lesions, the problems posed by certain psychical disorders oflered their activity a considerable field, for this we would owe him all our gratitude. " Quoted in G. Guillain, J. -M. Charcot (1825-189)): sa vie, son cruvre (Paris: Masson, 1955) p. 143. An illustration ol this will be the transfer of paternity rights over hysteria to neurologists in medical encyclopedias and dictionaries.
28. Foucault is relerring here to the obituary notice Freud wrote in August 1893 and published in the Wiener medt\inische Wochenschrift, vol. 43, no. 37, 1893, pp. 1513-1520: "In the hall in which he gave his lectures there hung a picture which showed 'citizen' Pinel having the chains taken oil the poor madmen in the Salpetnere. " S. Freud, "Charcot" GW, vol. 1,1952, p. 28; English translation, "Charcot" in Standard Edition, vol. 3, p. 18; French translation, "Charcot" trans. J. Altounian and others in S. Freud, Resultats, Idees, Problemes, vol. I, 1890-1920 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984) p. 68.
29. J. M. Charcot, Lecons sur les maladies du sysleme nerveux, vol. 1, Lecture 11: "De l'hyperesthesie ovanenne," pp. 320-345; English translation, Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, trans. George Sigerson (London: New Sydenham Society, 1877) vol. 1, Lecture 11: "Ovarian hyperaesthesia" pp. 262-282: "most ol the accidents which persist, in
a more or less permanent manner, in the intervals between the convulsive (its ol hysterical patients, and which almost always enable us, on account ol the characteristics they present, to recognise the great neurosis lor what it really is, even in the absence of convulsions" p. 262. Thus "Hemianaeslhesia, paralysis, contracture, fixed painful points occupying dillerent parts of the body," p. 262.
30. J. -M. Charcot, Lecons, vol. 1, Appendice V: "Des troubles de la vision chez les hystenques," pp. 427-434- (This appendix is omitted Irom the English translation. )
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31. Lemons, vol. 1, Lecture 10: "De l'heminesthesie hysterique" pp. 300-319; Clinical Lectures, vol. 1, "Hysterical hemianaesthesia" pp. 246-261.
32. Ibid. Lecture 12: "De la contracture hysterique" pp. 347-366; "Hysterical contracture" pp. 283-299; Lecons sur les maladies, vol. 3, Lecture 7: "Deux cas de contracture hysterique d'origine traumatique" pp. 97-107, and Lecture 8, (continued), pp. 109-123; Clinical Lectures, vol. 3, Lectures 7 and 8, "Two cases of hysterical contracture of traumatic origin" pp. 84-106.
33. Thus, in the Policlinique of 21 February 1888, "Hysteria in young boys," Charcot acknowl- edged: "It is very strange that in particularly mental forms the stigmata do not appear. " Lecons du mardi a la Salpetriere. Policlinique 1887-1S88, vol. 1, p. 208: "All these stigmata (. . . ) are constants in hysteria, but despite their constancy, I have to acknowledge that it quite often happens that we do not find them all, or even, when it comes to it, any. "
34- Sketched out Irom 1872 in the Lecons (vol. 1, Lecture 13: "De Phystero-epilepsie" pp. 373-374, and Appendice 6: "Description de la grande attaque hysterique" pp. 435-448; Clinical lectures, vol. 1, Lecture 13, "Hystero epilepsy" pp. 302-307, [the appendix is omitted from the English translation]), it was codified in 1878 when Charcot reduced it to a "a very simple formula": "All these apparently disordered and variable phenomena . . . follow a rule of development. The complete attack is made up ol four periods: 1. Epileptoid period. It may and usually does resemble the genuine epileptic attack (. . . ). There are grounds for dividing this epileptic period into three phases: a) tonic phase (. . . ); b) clonic phase. Limbs and the whole body are shaken by brief and rapid oscillations ( . . . ) which end in big generalized jolts ( . . . ) ; c) phase of resolution ( . . . ) . 2. Period of contortions and large movements (. .