The project that I am proposing concerns a collection of essays in the field of the history of psychiatry by Henri F. Ellenberger, the well-known Swiss medical historian. Ellenberger is best remembered today as the author of The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York, 1970), widely regarded as a remarkable , encyclopedic study of psychiatry from primitive times to the twentieth century. While many scholars are familiar with Ellenberger's Discovery, few people are aware of the fact that, after publication of this work Ellenberger published over twenty essays in the field of psychiatric history. Most of these essays originally appeared in relatively obscure French-Canadian psychiatric journals. Many of them deal with interesting and very important subjects and are based on pioneering research in the original sources. The essays fall roughly into four categories Freud and the history of psychoanalysis; the general history of psychiatry; historical methodology; and medicine, psychology, and culture. I propose to bring together a collection of Ellenberger's best essays in the history of psychiatry. My part in the project (in addition to assembling these writings and to interviewing Dr. Ellenberger) will be to write an introductory essay, to provide textual annotations, to do the translations, and to draw up a complete bibliography of Ellenberger's writings. My introductory essay will be detailed and interpretive. I plan here to present a biographical sketch of Ellenberger, to consider the main themes running through his work, to compare his writings to the work of other major psychiatric historians, and, most importantly, to establish Ellenberger's significance for current work in the field. In recent years, psychiatric history as an area of scholarly inquiry has been growing extremely rapidly. An important part of the development of any new discipline is the establishment and interpretation of its own origins and evolution. Many important features of Ellenberger's work--an emphasis on extensive research in foreign archives, an interest in reconstructing the medical world around Freud, a concern to highlight the role of the individual patient in medical history, an effort to establish Pierre Janet as a key medical figure, and so forth--anticipate directly current literature in the field. In light of these essays, Ellenberger may be see as a kind of """"""""father of European psychiatric historigraphy."""""""" The purpose of the project, then, is to bring together in a form accessible for an English-language audience, both medical and non-medical, the work of one of the major medical historians of the century and to present this work in its full and appropriate historical and historiographical context.
