Doctor Constance Pascal (1877-1937) pioneer of French psychiatry, of Romanian origin, practiced at the asylum of the White House (and where she lived in the beautiful pavilion on the right at the entrance of the asylum) from 1927 to 1937, date of her death (she is buried in the cemetery of Neuilly-sur-Marne). Her biography, written by Felicia Gordon (an English specialist in French feminism), was finally translated and published on 25 May 2023 by Editions des femmes Antoinette Fouque. She humanized the life of the insane, removing punishment, restraints, organized the training of nurses, connected with the condition of abnormal children, advocating the work of the sick as a factor of stabilization and prevention , hospitalization being a failure...she thinks of outpatient consultations... She did relentless research to improve care. Wrote many articles, wrote 3 books, worked on a 4th in 1937 when death arrived.
Researcher, tireless worker, stubborn in her fights against the administrative "narrow", visionary, she had realized a scenario on the model of a filmed comedy that she wanted to entrust to Jean Painlevé.
Politically engaged and feminist in her actions... She did not hesitate during the Great War to go to the front to treat the wounded. In 1936, she helped German resistance fighters to join the International Brigades...
She opened one of the first blood transfusion centers in the White House in 1932 and one of the first IMP for "abnormal" children in Châlons-sur-Marne.Elle made outdoor psychoanalytic cures, using psychedelics... She read Freud in her language and many philosophers and psychologists, she loved literature, music, made a very beautiful study of Schumann.
On a personal level, she experienced a drama also source of her greatest happiness... she had a daughter from an adulterous relationship with General Justin Mengin. Jeanne, a hidden girl born in 1916, whom she adopted in 1924... this made it possible to preserve her daughter from the opprobrium and she continued her career as a doctor of asylums of the Seine, which was not an easy matter at the beginning of the XX century, The career of doctor of asylums being until then reserved for men...
Do we not say that reality often exceeds fiction...
Forgotten Constance Pascal returns to us on the place where she lived with her daughter, the sick workers and her 4 dogs.
►The lecture-reading will take place in the "pink house" called The house of the project, which faces the pavilion of Constance Pascal( not accessible unfortunately for the moment)( on the grids from which we hope to hang large format photos of Constance) of 2 pm to 6 pm in the White House ( at the entrance of the White House hospital).
In the morning ( from 10am to 12pm) we got the right to go near La Maison de Santé de Ville-Évrard where Constance was interned from 1905 to 1909 with Dr Paul Sérieux.( see other sheet).