[Disease, experiment and psychology in mid-19th century France]

This article offers a contribution to the thesis that considers H. Taine and Th. Ribot the theorists of the "pathological method" in psychology, and thus the forefathers of French experimental psychology. At the same time it points out that the idea of equivalence between observation of the pathological and experimentation could already be found in th psychological medicine of the 1840s. The author examines the early years of the Annals médico-psychologiques (1843-1844), the constitution of the Société médico-psychologique (1852), and the work of J. Moreau de Tours (1843) on hashish and mental alienation, with the intention of demonstrating that in the 1850s French psychiatry was actively engaged in the debate on the Science des rapports du physique et du moral, and that consequently the organicistic paradigm, proclaimed in those years in Germany, had not yet spread to France.