An Approach to Nineteenth-Century Medical Lexicon: The Term “Dreamy State”

Abstract

Hughlings-Jackson coined the concept of dreamy state: According to him, one of the sensations of a “dreamy state” was an odd feeling of recognition and familiarity, often called “déjà vu”. A clear sense of strangeness could also be experienced in the “dreamy state” (“jamais vu”). Jackson himself did not use these French terms, but he was quite clear about the vivid feelings of strangeness and familiarity, which can occur in both normal and pathological conditions.

In order to explore some of the exchanges between medical and nonmedical vocabularies, we examine the historical origins of this technical concept. By basing the study on European (medical and nonmedical) literature of the nineteenth century, we review the first descriptions of this state and compare them with the famous Hughlings-Jackson definitions.

It appears that this medical concept was partly borrowed from a wide cultural background before being rationally developed and reworked in the fields of neurology and psychiatry.

Keywords:

• Hughlings-Jackson
• dreamy state
• medical lexicon
• nineteenth century

Notes

¹Though better known as an ethnologist than as a psychiatrist, James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848) received his MD from Edinburgh in 1808 and practiced medicine in Bristol. He was credited with popularizing the term “moral insanity” in The Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine (1833–1835) and in the Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind (1835).

²Alexandre Bertrand (1795–1831) was, with Joseph Philippe Deleuze, François-Joseph Noizet, and José Custódio de Faria, one of the most important followers of Puységur. He was first a student of the Polytechnic School and became a doctor in 1819. From 1819 to 1821, he delivered a series of lectures on somnambulism, and, in 1823, he published the Traité du somnambulisme et des modifications qu'il présente, in which he criticized the so-called animal magnetism: The magnetic somnambulism was produced under the influence of nervous exaltation in response to suggestion.

³James Braid (1795–1860), a Scottish surgeon, using hypnosis for therapeutic purposes and especially for surgical procedures, introduced the term of hypnotism in its modern sense and showed that the production of somnambulism did not depend upon the existence of any animal magnetism (see Alexandre Bertrand, 1823).

⁴ Hogan and Kaiboriboon stated in their 2003 paper that this was Dr. Alfred Thomas Meyer, a physician at the Belgrave Hospital in London.