From circular madness to bipolar disorder, including manic-depressive psychosis... a brief history of bipolarity

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Dual-form madness, circular, periodic, manic depression… Bipolar disorder has long sought a name. This mood disorder, characterized by an alternation between depressive and manic or hypomanic phases – periods during which euphoria and excitement increase abnormally – has been observed since Antiquity. The “first description of the link between mania and melancholy” is most often attributed “to Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek-speaking physician from the ^1st century AD,” explains specialist Marc Masson in his “Que sais-je?” devoted to bipolar disorders (PUF, 2018). We learn that, even at the time, these two states were associated with intellectual excitement. Aristotle is said to have wondered in these terms: “Why are men who have distinguished themselves in philosophy, politics, poetry or the arts clearly people in whom black bile predominates?” » According to the theory of humors, this bodily fluid was in fact linked to all kinds of pathologies.

However, it was not until the emergence of psychiatry as a medical specialty in the ^19th century that the definition of the disease became more precise. The "Clinical Treatise on Double-Form Madness (Circular Madness, Alternating-Form Delirium)," written by physician Antoine Ritti in 1883, was the very first work written in French on the subject. But it was a German psychiatrist, Emil Kraepelin, who entered posterity in 1899 by theorizing…

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