La description du syndrome de Charles Bonnet par Georges de Morsier dans les Annales Médico-Psychologiques

Abstract

More than 30 years after having introduced the term “Charles Bonnet syndrome”, Professor Georges de Morsier fixed its definition in a 1967 study published in Annales Médico-Psychologiques. In this study, he reaffirmed the intellectual and mental integrity of the elderly patients among whom this syndrome occurs. He denied that the hallucinations associated with this syndrome were caused by any visual pathology, claiming instead that they were the result of lesions in the visual areas of the brain. This study, which is often cited as the first description of the syndrome, was challenged in its day. Today, the role of visual pathologies in the etiology of the syndrome is widely acknowledged. One may explain de Morsier's mistake by pointing to his strict adherence to de Clérambault's organicist doctrine.