Abstract EN:

At the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, there appeared a wave of deliriums directly linked in their form and content to spiritualism. These deliriums were named spiritualistic deliriusms or mediumship deliriums. Though these had been detected in the preceding decades (Baillarger, Seglas), it was not until the first half of the twentieth century that they were subjected to a detailed study and that clinicians alloted them a place in nosography. This effort at classification was elaborated with regard to the certainties and paradoxes which they aroused and fits in with a context and intertextuality which have compelled psychiatrists to raise the question of the relationship between pathology and belief. As a background to this nosographic construction, it is essential to underline certain ideological positions of psychiatry concerning paranormality, in this case mediumship and the state of trance but also metapsychism. But at the same time, it has become apparent that there has been, in these fields, a simplifying approach to the problem as well as their utilisation in laying the foundation of a part of psychiatric knowledge.