The medical itineraries of Blaise Cendrars. Neuropsychiatry marks life and literature.
Neuropsychiatry had a profound impact on the life and work of one of the most influential French writers of the 20th century, Frédéric Sauser, better known by his pen name Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961). Cendrars, whose right writing hand was amputated after a battlefield wound in 1915, described with acuity his stump pain and phantom limb syndrome. He became a left-handed writer. Between 1956 and his death in 1961, he also suffered two strokes that progressively paralyzed his left side and greatly diminished his ability to speak. Cendrars had started medical school in his youth and found that his ideas about the genesis of mental disorders conflicted with the generally accepted psychiatric conceptions of hysteria or psychoanalysis. His theories were greatly enriched by his observations of fellow World War I soldiers, victims of neuropsychiatric disorders. In his novels, many of his characters had borderline conditions, including two spectacularly mad serial killers, Moravagine and Fébronio. The case of Moravagine, fashioned after a patient with a brain tumor, allowed Cendrars to examine the nebulous frontier between neurological and psychiatric diseases.
Service d'explorations et pathologies neuromusculaires, CHU de Besançon, laboratoire d'anatomie, UFR sciences médicales et pharmaceutiques, université de Franche-Comté, 25000 Besançon, France. Electronic address: laurent.tatu@univ-fcomte.fr.
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Center for Brain and Nervous System Disorders, Swiss Medical Network, département de neurologie, clinique Valmont, 1823 Glion, Switzerland.
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D005602:France; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006708:Homicide / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D009437:Neuralgia / Q000523:psychology; D058027:Neuropsychiatry / Q000266:history; D010591:Phantom Limb / Q000523:psychology; D020521:Stroke / Q000523:psychology; D014956:Writing / Q000266:history
Blaise Cendrars; Frédéric-Louis Sauser; Moravagine; Neuropsychiatrist