Birth of modern psychiatry and the death of alienism: the legacy of Jean-Martin Charcot.

At the time of Jean-Martin Charcot, Paris--the main center for studies on the nervous system and its disorders--was home to critical exchanges between the developing discipline of neurology and psychiatry. Contrary to the commonly held view, and in spite of an established tradition concerning mental diseases, emerging neurology had a much stronger influence on psychiatry ('alienism') than the reverse. This was largely due to the school built up by Jean-Martin Charcot himself, which was organized around the study and management of hysteria. Although Charcot always claimed to be uninterested in mental medicine, he stimulated the development of an original scientific approach to nervous system conditions, based on Claude Bernard's method, along with structured academic teaching. Conversely, alienism paradoxically remained stuck in organicism, after Antoine Bayle's report in 1822 of 'arachnitis' as the substratum of general paresis of the insane. Contrary to alienism, the young neurological school was capable of self-criticism, and progressively highlighted mental factors in hysteria. This led to the paradox that neurologists were active in a disease with no organic cerebral lesion, while alienists were postulating brain lesions in all mental disorders. Pushed by Charcot, the academic evolution led to the launch of a faculty chair of mental and brain diseases in 1875, which was taken over for nearly half a century by his direct pupils Benjamin Ball, Alix Joffroy and Gilbert Ballet, who held the position until 1916, supporting the development of modern psychiatry in general hospitals, while alienism progressively disappeared at the turn of the century.