Hersilie Rouy

Hersilie Rouy (1814–1881) was a French pianist, composer, and an honorary member of the Paris-based Society of Fine Arts. She spent 14 years in psychiatric asylums before her release, after which she received state compensation. The 'Rouy affair' became known beyond France, where it took on a political dimension. Along with her diaries, Rouy's life events are the subject of historical psychiatric research as well as the portrayal of women's lives in the 19th century.

Life Early life and education Camille Joséphine Hersilie Rouy, called Hersilie Rouy, was born on 14 April 1814 in Milan, then part of Napoleonic Italy, to Charles Rouy and Henriette Chevalier. Her father held a patent for a device for celestial cartography and worked as an astronomer. After Napoleon's rule ended, the French family moved back to Paris. From 1816 to 1823, they travelled through Poland and Russia while Charles worked as a house teacher for aristocratic families.

Although little is documented about Rouy's early piano training, she was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris in 1824 on her tenth birthday. whose "nouvelles études" further enhanced her "consummate talent" and "almost placed her on a par with Döhler, with Liszt, with Herz and with Kalkbrenner". In 1850, Rouy became an honorary member of the Society of Fine Arts (Société des Beaux-Arts). She resumed her work as a house concert performer and piano teacher and led a financially secure life as a recognised pianist, also known outside France. Rouy also began composing during this period.

In 1853, Parisian art book publisher de Bonnot released her piano song under the misspelt name Roux, "Cours devant moi" (Run in front of me), based on a text by the French Renaissance female poet Du Guillet.

After 1868 Beginning in 1854 at age 40, Rouy spent a total of 14 years in asylums and did not play the piano during this period. which was reported in the Journal des débats (which referred to her as the "former young brilliant pianist") and was picked up by English-speaking newspapers, Rouy gave her final concert for a circle of friends and supporters.

After her release, Rouy was homeless and destitute with her possessions having been auctioned off in 1854. With the support of friends, Rouy successfully applied and was granted state compensation in 1878. Rouy died of pneumonia on 27 September 1881. was published by Le Normant and was called "Les Mémoires d'une feuille de papier écrites par elle-même" (Memoirs of a sheet of paper written by herself).

'The Rouy affair'

Institutionalization Rouy was committed to the Hôpital Esquirol on 8 September 1854. Lacking financial resources for this privately run mental institution, Rouy was soon transferred to the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, resulting in an "unprecedented social decline" for the pianist. In 1863, after staying in three additional asylums, Rouy was finally brought to Orleans and admitted to a hospice under Le Normant's direction. Her claim was debated in the National Assembly and, after the collapse of the Second Empire, finally approved by the Assembly of the Third Republic. This outcome represented both personal vindication for Rouy and a public acknowledgement of the injustices she endured.

From this perspective, her case entered French history as the "Rouy Affair," serving as a rallying symbol for those challenging psychiatric injustices.

She became an anti-asylum activist through her actions. Although no corresponding evidence exists from any self-advocacy organisation in which she participated, but also other circumstances surrounding her imprisonment from a time perspective. These included "the urgency of a swift resolution to the divorce issue and the adoption of a law on establishing paternity", Guyot published detailed articles about Rouy in La Lanterne under the pseudonym L'infirmier (The nurse). Manier released "a lengthy diatribe describing incidents" such as Rouy's, which, in his opinion, illustrated the "abuse of psychiatric power" authorised by the Second Empire. In which, with the support of the psychiatric community, it enables individuals acting in their own interest to exonerate themselves from unwanted family members and have them committed. and repeatedly raised the issue in the National Assembly because such practices undermined the rights of the bourgeois class. Gambetta had already submitted a draft to the National Assembly in 1870 to revise the 1838 law, mentioning the "Hersilie Rouy" case. However, the change of government in 1871 sealed his initiative at that time.

Through their public and political outcry, activists primarily sought the repeal or reform of the law. French "anti-alienists" The campaign in France sparked a decades-long public debate that ultimately led to the amendment of the law in 1990. describe her experiences in the asylum and her struggle against her family, doctors, and the 1838 law. The first consists of "psychiatrists who use her memoirs as case-historical material in treatises on afflictions." This publication led to the diagnosis of Delirium of Interpretation, then Capgras delusion in subsequent scientific discussions.

In 1988, author Jeffrey Masson's Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing "brought Hersilie's memoirs to the attention of the English-speaking world as a case of 'false commitment' in consideration of the prehistory of psychotherapy".

In her 2007 book, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present, Lisa Appignanesi documents the historical treatment of mental illness in women, using case studies that also include Rouy. She wrote that Rouy, in response to her complaints about being institutionalised, was told: "Your delusion is total, and all the more dangerous and incurable in that you speak just like a person who is fully in possession of her reason."

The 2010 book L'affaire Rouy: une femme contre l'asile au XIXe siècle (The Rouy case: a woman against the asylum in the 19th century) by historian Yannick Ripa "is a gripping account of an incredible, tragic, and Kafkaesque saga", based on Rouy's 1883 diary and archival material. Ripa examines all aspects concerning Rouy from the perspective of a woman's fate during that period. "Over a person ... about whom everything is supposedly known because of her memoirs. ... The fact that she was a woman could only contribute to a discourse that was more strongly influenced by male ideology than by scientific rigour and truth." Ripa highlights "the place of historical discourse in relation to psychiatric discourse".

In 2015 French psychoanalyst Laurent Soulayrol published Les Mémoires d'une aliénée d'Hersilie Rouy — Vers de nouvelles perspectives, Études Psychanalytiques (The Memoirs of a Madwoman Hersilie Rouy — Towards New Perspectives, Psychoanalytic Studies) which analyzed the chronology of events, Rouy's delusional nature, the perspective of the psychiatrists, and locates her madness in the family constellation according to a typology developed by the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Lacan.