ALLENDY, RENÉ FÉLIX EUGÈNE (1889-1942)

A French homeopathic doctor and psychoanalyst, René Allendy was one of the founding members of the Société psychanalytique de Paris. He was born on February 19, 1889, in Paris; his father was a shopkeeper from the Isle of Maurice and his mother was from Picardy. He died in Montpellier on July 12, 1942. When he was three, he contracted bronchial pneumonia from his nurse and during childhood lived through a number of often serious illnesses, including diphtheria complicated by quadriplegia. A student of the Marist brothers at the Collège Saint-Joseph in Paris, he completed his study of the humanities at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly. He enrolled in the School of Oriental Languages to learn Russian. Later, he received a degree in Swedish from the Scandinavian Language Institute.

After receiving his medical degree from the School of Medicine of Paris on November 12, 1912 (his dissertation was entitled "L'Alchimie et la Médicine" [Alchemy and medicine]), he married Yvonne Nel-Dumouchel, just seven days later. Until her death in 1935, she remained his constant companion and collaborator. In 1936 he married Colette Nel-Dumouchel, Yvonne's sister.

After being mobilized in 1914, he was gassed in Champagne, later declared tubercular, and given a disability pension. He practiced medicine in Paris at the Léopold-Bellan hospital and at the tuberculosis prevention clinics run by Hygiène Sociale de la Seine and the Saint-Jacques hospital, where he provided homeopathic treatments from 1932 to 1939. With his wife Yvonne he founded, in 1922, the Groupe d'études philosophiques et scientifiques pour l'examen des idées nouvelles (Philosophic and scientific study group for the examination of new ideas) at the Sorbonne, where a number of speakers from France and other countries spoke on science, art, and psychoanalysis. He defined the organization's goals this way: "In order that the great movement of contemporary ideas might lead, without impediment, to practical realizations, it is essential to study the meaning of the future and hasten its spread."

Analyzed in 1924 by René Laforgue, he practiced medicine, homeopathy, and psychoanalysis, studied esotericism and numerology, and published extensively in all these fields. Aside from his private practice, located at 67, rue de l'Assomption, in Paris, he worked as a psychoanalyst in the department of Professor Claude at Sainte-Anne.

In 1924 he wrote, together with Laforgue, La Psychanalyse et les Nevroses (Psychoanalysis and neuroses), which appeared with a preface by Professor Claude. The same year, the review Le Disque vert published "La Libido" in an issue dedicated to Freud. He wrote more than thirty articles for homeopathy journals and was equally productive in the field of psychoanalysis: Les Rêves et leur Interprétation psychanalytique (Dreams and their psychoanalytic interpretation; 1926),Le Problème de la destinée (The problem of destiny; 1927), Orientations des idées médicales (Orientations of medical ideas; 1928), La Justice intérieure (Interior justice; 1931) and La Psychanalyse, doctrine et application (Psychoanalysis: theory and application; 1931). Although he often wrote about un-orthodox subjects, his theoretical positions remained fairly orthodox; he was, however, open to many of Jung's ideas, such as that of the collective unconscious. His book on Paracelsus remains a standard reference for admirers of the "accursed doctor." With Yvonne he published Capitalisme et Sexualité (Capitalism and sexuality) in 1932.

He was a friend of Antonin Artaud, and he was also Artaud's therapist; other patients included René Crevel and Anaïs Nin, who described Allendy in detail in her Journal. With Edouard Pichon, he drafted the first statutes of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, where he was secretary from 1928 to 1931. In 1942, in Montpellier, he dictated his last thoughts on the illness that would soon take his life. A strange mixture of lucidity and blindness, these were published in 1944 as the Journal d'un médicin malade (Journal of a sick doctor).

Jean-Pierre Bourgeron

See also: Allendy-Nel-Dumouchel, Yvonne; France; Nin, Anaïs; Surrealism and psychoanalysis.

Bibliography

Allendy, René. (1931). La justice intérieure. Paris: Denoël & Steele.

——. (1932). La psychanalyse, doctrines et applications. Paris: Denoël & Steele.

——. (1934). Essai sur la guérison. Paris: Denoël & Steele.

——. (1937). Paracelse, le médecin maudit. Paris: Gallimard.

——. (1944). Journal d'un médecin malade. Paris: Denoël.

Allendy, René, and Allendy, Yvonne. (1931). Capitalisme et sexualité. Paris: Denoël & Steele.

Bouvard, Laurent. (1981). La vie et l'œuvre du Dr René Allendy (1889-1942). Medical dissertation, Paris-Val-deMarne, Créteil School of Medicine.