Genius, Neurosis, and Family Trees
Genius, Neurosis, and Family Trees
Moreau de Tours
This chapter looks at how the pathologizing of genius continued in the work of Jacques-Joseph Moreau—known as “Moreau de Tours”—who adopted the eloquent term “morbid psychology” for his particular branch of mental medicine and defined genius as a form of neurosis. His book on the subject, Psychologie morbide (Morbid psychology, 1859) examines the general phenomenon of “neuropathy” rather than confining itself to the study of individual cases as Lélut had done. But the underlying assumptions and approach remain the same, and Moreau follows Lélut in asserting the physiological basis of mental malfunction when he insists that “it is essential…to explore man in his entrails and to abandon visions of pure reason in the regions of the absolute.” The mind exists in inseparable conjunction with the body, and genius is inherently pathological, placed within a configuration of mental debility that extends from imbecility to delirium.
Keywords: genius, Moreau de Tours, morbid psychology, neurosis, Jacques-Joseph Moreau, Psychologie morbide, neuropathy, mental malfunction, mental medicine
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
