Jean Delay

Jean Delay (; 14 November 1907 – 29 May 1987) was a French psychiatrist, neurologist, writer, and a member of the Académie française (Chair 17).

His assistant Pierre Deniker conducted a test of chlorpromazine on the male mental ward where Delay worked, and the two published their findings (quickly, with what has been called academic gamesmanship) in 1952. Chlorpromazine turned out to be the first effective drug treatment for mental illness and it had a profound effect on the mentally ill and mental asylums.

In 1968–1970, student revolutionaries attacked his offices, and Delay was forced into retirement from medicine. In later life, he lived as a writer.

Family and education The son of Maurice Delay, a successful surgeon and mayor of Bayonne, at age fourteen Delay earned a baccalaureate in philosophy. He studied medicine in Paris. After studying in hospitals for twenty years, especially the teaching of Pierre Janet and Georges Dumas, he turned to psychiatry. He also specialized in neurology at the Salpêtrière Hospital. He wrote his doctoral thesis on astereognosis in 1935. He then undertook the study at the Sorbonne and in 1942 wrote his doctoral thesis (doctorate in letters) on diseases of memory. He received degrees in medicine, literature, and philosophy.

Jean Delay was the father of Florence Delay, of the Académie française (Seat 10), and of Claude Delay, novelist and psychoanalyst.

Career Delay was chair of the department of psychiatry at the Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne from 1946 to 1970. He received training in the psychiatry clinic of Henri Ey at the Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne. There he became the chair of the clinic of mental illness in 1946. He remained at the hospital until 1970 when he retired from medicine. With Ey, Delay organized the First World Congress of Psychiatry and founded the World Psychiatric Association (WPA).

Delay twice served as president of the WPA (1950 and 1957), and also as president of the French language Congress of Neurology and Psychiatry (1954), the Society Medico-Psychologique (1960), the International Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine (1960), and the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP) (1966). He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1955.

During his scientific career, Delay published more than 700 articles and over 40 books. Delay's name came first on these papers in part because he was the leader of a department with strong hierarchy.

Delay's team studied isoniazid (INH) and its effect on depression, around 1952. Known first as a "ganglio-plegic", he first called the drug "neuroplégique" then finally a "neuroleptic". Deniker, with Harl and Delay, published the success with chlorpromazine in May 1952. Chlorpromazine reached common use by 1957 worldwide, except in the United States where medications were then still considered less useful than psychodynamic therapy. He decided to work on literature, which was his first love.

Literature Delay was elected to the Académie française in 1959 and wrote remarkable biographical studies on the Youth of André Gide (1956–1957), and his maternal ancestors in the four volumes of Preliminary Memory (1979–1986). His essay Psychiatry and Psychology The Immoraliste earned him the Grand Prix in criticism. He used the pseudonym Jean Faurel from his days at Salpêtrière until sometime before 1959.

Awards Commander of the Legion of Honour Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Grand officer of the National Order of Merit Commander of the Ordre de la Santé publique Elected to the Académie française in 1959, succeeding Georges Lecomte

Works Les Dissolutions de la mémoire, Preface by Pierre Janet, 1942, PUF Brain Waves and psychology, Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) 1942 The Dissolution of Memory, Foreword by Pierre Janet, Presses Universitaires de France, 1942 The gray city, romance, Flammarion, 1946 The Relaxing, novel, Gallimard, 1947 Nameless men, news, Gallimard, 1948 Medical psychology studies, Presses Universitaires de France, 1953 Youth Gide, Gallimard, 1956–1957 Brain Electricity, Presses Universitaires de France, 1973 Before Memory, Gallimard, 1979, 4th prize Pierre-Lafue Foundation 1980 The Euchre grid, story, Gallimard, 1988