Justine Tobolowska (1875–1937), élève d’André Collin (1879–1926), première femme psychiatre de l’enfant et de l’adolescent

Abstract

Au XIX^e siècle, Louis Delasiauve (1804–1893), Auguste Voisin (1829–1898), Paul Moreau de Tours (1844–1908), Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909) furent de ceux qui, parmi les aliénistes, ont les premiers porté un intérêt aux troubles mentaux chez l’enfant, bien avant que ne naisse la psychiatrie de l’enfant, en 1937. Justine Tobolowska est dans ce domaine l’une des premières et principales pionnières, en un temps où la médecine s’ouvre peu à peu aux femmes. Née le 10 février 1875 à Varsovie du temps de la Pologne russe, elle s’expatrie en France en 1893 et débute ses études de médecine à Paris l’année suivante. Successivement externe des hôpitaux de Paris (1895–1897) et interne provisoire des asiles d’aliénés de la Seine (1898), elle soutient en 1900 sa thèse de doctorat consacrée aux illusions dans les rêves. Après quelques publications avec Eugène-Bernard Leroy (1871–1932), elle s’oriente vers la psychiatrie infantile par sa rencontre avec André Collin (1879–1926), fondateur de la psychopédiatrie (1924), une spécialité éphémère assimilée par la suite à la neuropsychiatrie infantile. Dans les années 1920, J. Tobolowska exerce avec lui au dispensaire de la rue de Jouy, à Paris. En 1924, elle est sa collaboratrice dans un centre de psychopédiatrie installé dans une école publique de la ville de Suresnes. Dans les années 1930, elle assure aussi des consultations de neuropsychiatrie à l’Institut de prophylaxie de Paris fondé par Arthur Vernes (1879–1976), le futur Institut Vernes. Les quelques publications qu’elle nous a laissées la montrent avant tout clinicienne, où la question du développement de l’enfant a toute son importance, comme l’enseignait A. Collin. Au regard de son parcours médical et de sa collaboration avec A. Collin, J. Tobolowska apparaît ainsi la première femme psychiatre de l’enfant et de l’adolescent. Féministe en herbe, elle décède le 12 septembre 1937 à Bayonne, probablement dans les suites d’une intervention chirurgicale. Elle a 62 ans.

At the end of the 19th century the medical profession was still considered to be a man's job. During that century, Louis Delasiauve (1804–1893), Paul Moreau de Tours (1844–1908), Auguste Voisin (1829–1898), and Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909) were adult alienists; they were nevertheless interested in mental disorders in children even before the birth of child psychiatry (1937). Justine Tobolowska (1875–1937) was born on 10 February 10, 1875, in Warsaw during the time of Russian Poland. In 1893, she arrived alone in France having come to Paris to study medicine. Her father was a doctor and had remained in Warsaw with his wife and his two other children. In 1894, she passed the externat examination at the Paris hospitals. Between 1895 and 1897 she received master's degrees in neurology and psychiatry with the topics being : Gilbert Ballet (1853–1916), Philippe Chaslin (1857–1923), and Gaston Deny (1947–1923). Her pediatric master's degree topics were Jules Comby (1853–1947) and Gaston Variot (1855–1930). In 1898, she became a temporary resident at the Seine insane asylums. Two years later, she presented her thesis on illusions in dreams. From 1900 until 1906 she worked at the Salpêtrière hospice, and during the last year she applied for French naturalization. After two publications on dreams with Eugène-Bernard Leroy in 1901 and 1902, she moved to child psychiatry; they examined dream hallucinations from the point of view of the psychological conditions of their appearance and their relationship to concomitant ideas and the course of the dream. Between 1910 and 1915 Tobolowska submitted numerous book reviews to the Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologiques in which she demonstrated her interest in child psychology and pedagogy. With André Collin (1879–1926) she trained in psychopediatrics, a short-lived specialty that came to be known as child neuropsychiatry. She opened a practice at 7, rue Léopold-Robert (Paris; 14th arrondissement). In 1924, she worked with A. Collin in a pediatric psychology center set up in a public school (Jules Ferry school) in the town of Suresnes where she was falsely accused of treating children without parental consent. In the 1930s she also provided neuropsychiatric consultations at the Institut de Prophylaxie de Paris founded by Arthur Vernes (1879–1976), the future Institut Vernes. She was a corresponding member of the Société Clinique de Médecine Mentale (1913) and of the Association des Amis de la Radiesthésie (1929). The few publications she has left us show that she was first and foremost a clinician where the question of child development was of the utmost importance, as A. Collin had taught. In view of her medical career and her collaboration with A. Collin, Tobolowska appears to be the first foreign women to become French through naturalization (1906) and who was one of the very first child and adolescent psychiatrists in France. A budding feminist, Tobolowska, who had no descendants, died on September 1937 in Bayonne, probably following an operation at the private surgical clinic of Jules Lafourcade (1865–1942). She was 62 years old.