Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault

Some of the photos were taken as part of a research project involving symptoms of hysteria. Many of his photos were later placed in the Musée de l'Homme.

Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault studied at Collège Stanislas de Paris, École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs and Paris Medical Faculty. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is psychiatry. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Legion of Honour and Croix de guerre 1914–1918.

De Clérambault gained his thesis in 1899, later becoming an assistant physician at the special infirmary for the insane, Préfecture de Police (1905). From 1920 onward, he was head of this institution. For a period of time, Clérambault conducted classes on the art of draped costumes at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is credited with introducing the term "psychological (mental) automatism", proposing that the mechanism of mental automatism could be blamed for hallucinatory experiences. He divided mental automatisms into three types: associative, motor and sensitive. He considered the mental automatism to be the primary process of psychosis while the delusional state was to be regarded as secondary. Clérambault is also credited with describing and cataloguing individual automatisms — there are considered to be around eighty distinct automatisms. For his actions during World War I, de Clérambault was awarded with a cross of the Légion d'Honneur as well as the Croix de Guerre. He committed suicide by firearm on 17 November 1934 in Malakoff, a commune southwest of Paris. Famously, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan attributed his 'entry into psychoanalysis' as largely due to the influence of de Clérambault, whom he regarded as his 'only master in psychiatry'. Eugène Minkowski and Henri Ey were also deeply influenced by Clérambault's work in psychiatry. In 1942, one of his former pupils, Jean Fretet, published two volumes of Clérambault's works with the title "Oeuvre Psychiatrique". Clérambault's life and art are depicted in the film "Cry of Silk" (1996).

de Clérambault's syndrome; (also called erotomania) a condition in which a person becomes deluded that a certain person of higher social status is in love with them. It was described by Clérambault in a treatise titled "Les psychoses passionelles" (1921). Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome; a confusing clinical entity in which the patient believes his mind is being controlled by someone else or external forces. Named along with Russian physician Victor Khrisanfovich Kandinsky (1849–1889).