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Jean Delay (1907-1987) was a [[psychiatrist ]] and writer, a professor of [[medicine ]] in [[Paris]], and a member of the Académie française and the Académie de médecine. He was [[born ]] on November 14, 1907, in Bayonne and died on May 29, 1987, in Paris. He was the only son of Maurice Delay, a surgeon who went to Bayonne to [[practice ]] and ultimately became mayor, and Berthe Mihura, a musician, [[mystic]], and cultured [[woman ]] from an old Basque [[family]]. Delay obtained his baccalaureate degree when he was only fourteen and a half, and had to obtain permission from Léon Bérard, minister of education, to attend medical [[school]]. He was less than sixteen when he [[left ]] for Paris to study medicine, and he remained a precocious student throughout his [[life]]. He excelled as an extern at the hospital but soon discovered that he had little interest in surgery and enrolled in the [[university]]'s [[literature ]] department. Georges Dumas, who held the [[chair ]] of [[psychopathology ]] at the Sorbonne, introduced Delay to [[psychiatry]].

In 1928 Delay was an intern, the youngest doctor in the Paris hospital [[system]], and in 1939 he joined the staff of the [[Sainte-Anne ]] Hospital, where he worked with [[Henri Claude ]] and Maxime Laignel-Lavastine. After the Germans deported Joseph Lévy-Valensi, Delay became head of the psychiatry department. He served as an expert adviser at the Nuremberg trials, where he examined Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher. In 1946, when he was only 38 years old, Delay was appointed to the chair of [[mental ]] [[illness ]] and brain diseases and later held the Charcot chair until 1970, when he retired.

After defending his [[doctoral dissertation ]] in literature, entitled "Dissolutions de la mémoire" (1942), which was influenced by the [[work ]] of Pierre Janet, he became part of the great [[tradition ]] of [[French ]] [[psycho]]-[[pathology ]] through such publications as Les dérèglements de l'humeur (1946) andÉtudes de [[psychologie ]] médicale (1953). Upon the departure of Henri Piéron, he became director of the Institut de Psychololgie at the [[University of Paris]].

Delay was chair of the first International Congress in Psychiatry held in Paris in 1950 and was elected member of the Académie de médicine in 1955. His neurological [[training ]] is reflected in his dissertation on tactile agnosia and [[other ]] work published in this area. He coined the term "neuroleptic" and introduced the use of reserpine into psychiatry. His interests extended to the use of antidepressants, and he completed his research on mescaline by studying LSD and psilocybin, which he referred to as "oneirogenics." He was also involved in the discovery of Largactil, used in psycho-pharmacology. In 1960 he chaired the first Congrès de médicine psychosomatique (Congress of [[Psychosomatic ]] Medicine).

Édouard Pichon introduced him to [[psychoanalysis ]] before the Second [[World ]] War during a brief training [[analysis]]. Delay retained a nuanced, nondoctrinaire attitude toward Sigmund [[Freud]]'s work. During the Occupation, the [[psychoanalysts ]] John Leuba, Georges Parcheminey, Jacques [[Lacan]], and Marc Schlumberger worked in his department; after the war [[Jacques Lacan ]] and André Green had a [[psychoanalytic ]] practice there. His department also hosted [[Jacques lacan|Jacques Lacan]]'s Wednesday [[seminars ]] (from November 18, 1953, to November 20, 1963) and Friday seminars, until it was decided that they were no longer appropriate. He remained suspicious of the "quacks of the [[unconscious]]" and what he considered poorly managed psychoanalysis. Delay was elected to the Académie française in 1959.

Throughout his life Delay maintained a [[literary ]] career, his work initially [[being ]] published under the pseudonym Jean Faurel (La cité grise [1946], Les reposantes [1947], Les Hommes sans nom [[[1948]]]). His two-volume work on André Gide, The Youth of André Gide (originally published in 1956-1957), soon became famous. Jacques Lacan, in "Jeunesse de Gide, ou la [[lettre ]] et le [[désir]]" (1966), wrote, "Jean Delay extends this ambiguity by locating the effect within the soul, at the very [[place ]] where the [[message ]] is formed." He also worked on a historical reconstruction of his [[mother]]'s family in the four volumes of Avant-mémoire (1979-1986).

In a final homage to Delay at the Académie fran-çaise, Jean Dutourd wrote, "In the [[case ]] of Jean Delay, who knew everything, who had explored medicine's most hidden pathways, the [[philosophy ]] of the [[past]], and even [[madness]], we do not have the [[feeling ]] we are talking with a contemporary but with one of those immense gluttons for [[knowledge ]] who made the Quattrocento and the sixteenth century so amazing. Nor was he contemporary in his [[behavior]]. In his courtesy, his refinement, and his kindness, he was the kind of gentleman one might have found in Balthazar Castiglione, and an 'honest man' as well."

# Delay, Jean. (1960). [[Discours ]] de réceptionà l'Académie française c . Paris: Gallimard.

# [[Lacan, Jacques]]. (1966). Jeunesse de Gide, ou la lettre et le désir. In hisÉcrits. Paris: Seuil.