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Convergence and conflict: anthropology, psychiatry and feminism in the early writings of Madeleine Pelletier (1874—1939)

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, fmgordon{at}btinternet.com

This paper reviews the early career and psychiatric writings of Madeleine Pelletier (1874—1939), between 1901 and 1906. Pelletier, a committed feminist and socialist, was the first woman to remove the barriers to women entering the French psychiatric profession, successfully passing the examination for the l'internat des hôpitaux psychiatriques in 1903. Her involvement in La Société d'Anthropologie de Paris and the Institut Général de Psychologie provided a forum for her interest in psychology, both normal and abnormal. She turned increasingly to sociological explanations for mental illness, unwilling to accept the determinism inherent in degeneration theory. Although her career in psychiatry was cut short in 1906, her training and her debating skills, honed in the rationalism of the scientific and Free Masonic societies that she frequented, stood her in good stead in her subsequent career as a political militant.

Key Words: anthropology • feminism • France • psychiatry • psychology

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 19, No. 2, 141-162 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X07082616


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