Dangerous Passions: The Modern Origins of Medicalization of Emotions

This essay aims to show the origins of the very process of the medi- calisation and true pathologisation of passions and emotions that can be found at the “birth” of the discipline of “psychiatry” in Philippe Pinel and also in Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, with particular regard to their books Medico-philosophical Treatise on Mental Alien- ation and e passions considered as causes, symptoms and means of cure in cases of insanity. Attention is focused on the crucial idea that passions are seen as a cause of mental illness in a narrow sense: the point is that their dangerosité is understood as something that can even lead to hospitalization.