Phenomenology in Henri Ey’s Work and French Psychiatry

Abstract

The study of the place of phenomenology in the writings of Henri Ey (1900–1977) can contribute to an understanding of the scope of this philosophical movement in France, and to a certain extent, of contemporary psychiatric thought. Ey’s work covers more than half a century, from Hallucinations et délire of 1934¹ (foreword by Jules Séglas, 1856–1939, M. D. at Salpêtrière hospital and author of the clinical description of the verbal hallucination), up to 1973, the year of the monumental treatise entitled Traité des hallucinations.² These two titles clearly indicate how psychopathological phenomena were always a major interest of Henri Ey. Hallucinations and delusions (deliriums) are two different symptoms in the classical French Psychiatric School, though they have been a subject of passionate debate. We can recall for instance the debates in the Société Médico-Psychologique (created in 1852), which took place as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. In English psychiatry, the use of the same word “delusion” to mean two different things does not clearly indicate the differences, though the question of the links between the two concepts is posed.