"Suicidal instinct" inscribed in the body : Discussion on suicide in German-language and French medical literature between Werther and Kleist
Abstract
The aim of the study is to present and analyse the main novelties, which Enlightenment medical thought brought the interpretation of suicidal behaviour, and so facilitating the decriminalization of suicide. I concentrate mainly on physicians whose activities and intellectual activities have been connected at least for some time with the Habsburg monarchy, especially with Viennese but also with Prague clinics and universities: Leopold Auenbrügger (1722-1809) Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828), Josef Bernt (1770-1842) and Johann Peter Frank (1745-1821).
However, I attempt to place their ideas conceptually in the context of the other relevant books from the area of period German and French medical (psychiatric) thought, and show on them, the very often decisive, share and influence. Within the framework of the differentiation of the Late Enlightenment medicine, the changes and novelties in the area / field of so-called "medical police", pathological anatomy, neurology and "alienistics" - future psychiatry but also medical jurisprudence (i.e., legal medicine) will be important for me.
I consider the following to be crucial: 1) The perception of suicide as an independent diseased state, namely - I emphasize - a state that is always pathological; 2) The efforts to localize the "suicidal tendencies" in the body, and thus also a physical, empirical anchoring of this pathological state; 3) The "entry" of this new understanding of suicide into "practice" through medical jurisprudence, which allowed an entirely direct confrontation with the theological and legal practices.