Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction

1. "Profession" in context
  The corporate model
  The statist model 
  The laissez-faire model 
  Redefinition

2. Toward psychiatry
  The bureaucracy: health police of the insane
  General medical theory: medicine as "anthropology"
  Specialization

3. The transformation of charlatanism, or the moral treatment
  Philippe Pinel: a medical career in political context
  Pinel and the "concierges": the origins of the moral treatment
  What was the moral treatment?
  "Scientizing" the treatment
  A therapy for the Revolution
  Healthy sentimentality

4. The politics of patronage
  The Pinel circle
  The Esquirol circle
  The dynamics of recruitment: specialization and the "doctor glut"

5. Monomania
  The initial definition of the disease
  Professional ramifications (I): charting "mental tendencies"
  Professional ramifications (II): the emergence of forensic psychiatry
  A boundary dispute with the legal profession
  The elusive insanity: its partisans and its varieties
  The politicization of the monomania doctrine
  The medical defense of monomania and the self-defense of psychiatric specialization
  The decline of monomania

6. Religious roots and rivals
  A religious mission to the insane
  The moral treatment as religious consolation
  The anticlerical current in early médecine mentale
  The collaborative possibility

7. Choosing philosophical sides
  The philosophical choice
  Médecine mentale and "physiology"
  The inroads of spiritualism
  Practical implications of philosophical positions
  Some comparative remarks

8. The Law of 1838 and the asylum system
  Lunacy legislation and the constitutional monarchy
  The obstacle of interdiction and the theory of isolation
  The government's bill: an exercise in "political medicine"
  The establishment of a nationwide asylum system
  Assessing the clerical "threat"

9. Hysteria, anticlerical politics, and the view beyond the asylum
  The hysteria diagnosis and the epidemiology of hysteria
  The appropriation of the demi-fou
  A profession's progress, 1838-1876
  Shifting political configurations, 1838-1876
  The anticlerical partnership 
 
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliographic note
Afterword
Index