Psychosomatic Disorders in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (review)

This book originates in a Ph.D. thesis, Les Maladies psychosomatiques au siècle classique, and is translated by Jane Marie Todd (information tucked away in the Acknowledgements). At one point Bernadette Höfer states that Mme de Lafayette 'allows us to speculate about the symptoms and origins of the illnesses she evokes' (p. 139), and this book is her own speculation, in which some early modern authors are presented as 'clear precursors of modern thinkers in the fields of psychosomatic medicine, neurobiology, and psychoanalytic thought' (p. 7). Höfer's focus is the mind-body relationship. Beginning with the idea that literature, philosophy, and medical science are closely linked, then associating psychological malaise under Louis XIV with absolutist repression, and quoting widely from the neurosciences and psychiatric medicine, Höfer sets out to show that true self-understanding is grounded in the experience of the body. After an introduction delineating the rationale for this approach, she first examines what is said on the subject by early modern physicians, moralists, and philosophers such as Descartes and Spinoza, and also cites witnesses from the Romantic period, the whole set against 'the contemporary conception' (p. 53: the definite article surprises). She then scrutinizes Jean-Joseph Surin's Science expérimentale of 1663, which relates his psychiatric illness, to show the perils of attempting to submit the body to rational control. The final chapters use texts by Molière, Mme de Lafayette, and Racine to further this demonstration. Le Misanthrope and Le Malade imaginaire provide evidence of melancholy as the subversion of absolutism, while psychosomatic moments in Mme de Lafayette's fiction are deemed to show a concordance between that author's ideas and recent neurobiological research (though, strangely, in thirty-five pages there is only a onesentence reference to Monsieur de Clèves's crucial illness, originating in jealous passion). The final chapter, on Racine's 'theatre of melancholy', concentrates on psychosomatic states in Phèdre and Hippolyte, viewed as 'metonymies for a social, cultural, and political bodies in distress' (p. 210). The neurobiological is obviously Höfer's element, but this will not prevent the less learned from asking questions. For example, to the extent that literary texts before and after Louis XIV portray similar psychosomatic manifestations, what is, then, distinctly repressive about that society? Can we accept without discussion Gretchen Smith's thesis that by 1672 Louis XIV 'controlled the manufacturing and meaning of words' (p. 8)? Or again, is it only classical theatre that 'plays out the tensions between individual and collective identity' (p. 96)? Many similar questions could be asked. On the other hand, there is no reason to complain about what does not concern Höfer: her Molière is not the comic dramatist but the philosopher who disputed Cartesian idealism. While some might grumble that this is like discussing a meal without referring to the food, Höfer's book will certainly provide nourishment for those who share her interests. One closes it with unstinting admiration for the (almost) invisible translator.