Historique du syndrome de Capgras – est-il une forme naturelle ?

Abstract

Joseph Capgras (1873–1950) and his pupils described between 1923 and 1924 the 3 first cases of a phenomenon that they called “Illusion des sosies” and quickly designated as Capgras’ syndrome (CS). The 1923 princeps case defined the phenomenon as coming from the impossibility for the patient to have access to the identity of a person and, because the resemblance was preserved, to declare that she dealt with a “sosie” (a double). The explanation was limited to the conjecture that there existed a different emotional factor between the memory image and the actual perception. The 2 following cases were more oriented towards the, then booming, psychodynamic explanations which lead in case 3, where the aetiology was organic, to misunderstand its interest. Afterwards, the syndrome which has been early known in the UK, its second chosen homeland will be the object, from psychologists specialists of face recognition studies, of unitarian explanations in the frame of a Cognitive neuropsychiatry. This approach is challenged in the name of a discontinuity between psychiatric and organic cases by supporters of a “regional epistemology” peculiar to psychiatry. A reflection about terminology concludes, in agreement with the concept of syndrome, that CS is both a natural and a practical kind.