Édouard Toulouse

portrait. Credit: Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de santé.

Édouard Toulouse (10 December 1865 in Marseille – 19 January 1947 in Paris) was a French psychiatrist, journalist, and director of the literary magazine Demain.

Career

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As a young man, Toulouse worked for a number of newspapers in Marseille as a drama critic.

He later headed the Clinic for Mental Illness at the Paris Faculty.[1]:14 Toulouse believed artistic creativity had an important role to play in psychological treatment. He considered himself a novelist, 'and said that he had come to science through literary activity'[1]:14 In 1896 he conducted a survey of men of exceptional genius where he profiled writer Émile Zola and French luminaries to identify shared, explainable characteristics. Following this project, Toulouse was named the director of a modern clinic in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif in 1898.[2]

In 1912 he established the fortnightly literary journal Demain, which covered a wide array of topics.[2] A number of important figures worked on the journal, including Antonin Artaud and Jean Paulhan.[2]

At the beginning of World War I, Toulouse conducted a survey of asylum care in France, and looked to "transform asylums of confinement into hospitals of mental health care."[2]

He founded the League of Hygiene and Mental Prophylaxis in December 1920[1]:14

References

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  1. ^ a b c Baillaud, Bernard; Cornick, Martyn (2004). "Jean Paulhan's Influences: The Review Demain". Yale French Studies (106): 11–25. doi:10.2307/3655211. ISSN 0044-0078. JSTOR 3655211.
  2. ^ a b c d Shafer, David A. (2016-04-15). Antonin Artaud. Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781780236018.