Degeneration vs. Progeneration Science and Pseudoscience

Degeneration vs. Progeneration

• Science and Pseudoscience

Cultural Origins of Degeneration Theory

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: degeneration of the aristocracy as moral, political, and social critique: aristocracy mannered, decadent, effeminate, immoral, diseased

• European Romanticism

• -- association of madness and artistic creativity

• -- infatuation with Romantic science and pseudosciences: physiognomy and phrenology

Psychiatric Origins of Degeneration Theory: Benedict-Augustin Morel (1809-1873)

• Worked on theory of degeneration 1839-1857, publication of theory dominated French psychiatry for 100 years

• Argued that mental illness and social deviance hereditary: acquired traits fixed in germ plasm

• Described 4-stage progression of generational degeneracy

• No specific pathology passed on; rather, susceptibility of nervous system to disturbances

• Identified dementia praecox, in 1908 renamed schizophrenia

Influence of Morel’s theory

• Interest in how toxic substances (alcohol) affect progeny -- fetal alcohol syndrome

• Established foundation for research in eugenics, the improvement of human (or a given race or ethnic group) by means of control of fertility (Nazis)

• Many mental illnesses have hereditary component, albeit genetic

Literary Origins of Degeneration Theory: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

• Son of dissolute actor and consumptive actress, genius, alcoholic, drug addict, syphilitic

• Short stories portraying crime, obsession, madness, and delusion

• Fall of the House of Usher

• Interest in pseudo-sciences, phrenology and physiognomy

• Ignored in U.S., extremely popular with French literary avant-garde

Heirs to Poe’s literary degeneration

• Charles Baudelaire, poet, literary critic, first modern poet -- advocate of art for art’s sake, author of Les Fleurs du mal

• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Poe favorite American writer, roman-feulliton (crime, mystery)

Heirs to Morel’s degeneration theory: Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)

• Founder of Italian School of Positivist Criminology

• Popularized idea that criminality is biologically determined, that criminals had devolved, evolutionary regression

• Born criminal identified by atavistic stigmata that could be detected and measured

• Believed that whites most evolved

• Women less criminal because more passive

Max Nordau (1849-1923) Simon Südfeld

• Social critic, Zionist leader

• Entartung (Degeneration), 1892 argued that civilization itself was degenerating

• Moral and social critique of bourgeois rationalist aimed at conduct, morality, art of new avant-garde

• Freud first to challenge degeneration theory

• Irony: Jewish proponents, Nazi adherents