Boris Cyrulnik is a neuropsychiatrist and teaching director at the University of Toulon. He is the author of many books, all of which have been best-sellers, including the recent best-selling Psychothérapie de Dieu

Patrick Lemoine is a psychiatrist, sleep specialist, doctor of neurosciences, and associate professor at the University of Beijing, he has published more than thirty books, many of which have been best-sellers, including Le Mystère du placebo
La Folle Histoire des idées folles en psychiatrie, published in 2016, was such a success that we decided to publish its continuation! Indeed, the list of aberrations, false starts, dead ends, and even abuse that have marked the history of this still young discipline is long… Among the crazy stories that are found in this new work: the demonic affair of the possessed in Loudun; the incredible success of phrenology and pseudo-sciences; atrocities committed in the service of ideas about mental hygiene; the strange journey of Anorexia nervosa, the monster that destroys young girls; or the “sluggish schizophrenia” of dissidents under Stalin…
Involving a dozen experts, Patrick Lemoine and Boris Cyrulnik discuss psychiatry’s past. They also invite us to focus on a few contemporary issues, difficult, to say the least: how much confidence should we have in psychiatry? What safeguards should we put in place? What would a society without psychiatry be like? And what will be the future of this branch of medicine that is inarguably not like others?