Psychiatrist Raphaël Gaillard elected to the French Academy

It is a rare profile that the immortals have just elected among themselves during the election to chair no. 16 occupied by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. First remark: Raphaël Gaillard is extremely young for an immortal: he is 48 years old. He is therefore the youngest of the venerable Company. We have to go back to Jean d'Ormesson, elected in 1973 at the age of 48 to the chair of Jules Romans, to find traces of such precocity. Closer to us, they were Erik Orsenna (elected at 51), Jean-Marie Rouart (elected at 54) and Jean-Christophe Rufin (elected at 56), the youngest.

Second remark: normalien, psychiatrist, writer, Raphaël Gaillard, through his profession and his knowledge, will expand the range of characters and qualities that make up the French Academy and its 37 members (there are still three empty chairs). During this election which was held on Thursday April 25 at 4 p.m., he won the vote in the first round, with 15 votes (out of 30 voters). Dominique Chagnollaud de Sabouret obtained two votes, and Éric Dubois, one vote. There were two blank ballots and ten ballots marked with a cross signifying the refusal of all candidates.

It must be said that two weeks ago, we witnessed an event: the sailor Isabelle Autissier, despite being the favorite, withdrew her candidacy for the chair of Giscard d'Estaing. She did not explain her withdrawal. Too bad, because at the French Academy we like elections where strong personalities confront each other (when these elections do not result in a “white election”, that is to say without elected officials).

It is therefore a psychiatrist who comes under the Cupola, Professor Raphaël Gaillard directs the hospital-university psychiatry center of Saint-Anne hospital and the University of Paris. In this, he follows a certain tradition of academic scientists. We remember, among others, professors Yves Pouliquen (ophthalmologist), Jean Bernard (cancerologist) and François Jacob (cellular genetics), Henri Mondor (surgery), Jean Delay (surgery and psychology) and Jean Hamburger (nephrology)… The new elected will sit alongside Professor Jules Hoffmann (integrative biology) and Doctor Jean-Christophe Rufin. Raphaël Gaillard's work on consciousness and unconscious processes has been published in the most prestigious neuroscience and psychiatry journals. He chairs the Pierre Deniker Foundation, which supports research into psychological disorders and works to promote awareness of them among the general public.

Raphaël Gaillard is the author of a highly acclaimed book, which pleases writers as well as scientists, and especially readers, Un coup d'axe dans la tête (Grasset), with a banner which explains the fascinating subject of essay: madness and creativity. It is a question about the link between madness and creativity. The psychiatrist draws on the cases of several patients and recent scientific studies to renew the understanding of psychological disorders and the conditions of artistic creation. A small sign: the essay received the Jacques de Fouchier prize awarded by the Académie française in 2022… In this book, he writes this: “What makes us beings capable of creating? When Diderot writes that “great artists have a little ax in their heads”, he is consecrating an idea that crosses eras and cultures: whether it is melancholy according to Aristotle, the storm of passions according to Romantic or surrealist manifesto, all celebrate the link between madness and creativity, to the point of considering madness as the ordinary of genius. However, the idea hardly resists the daily experience of the psychiatrist, who here tells his patients and shows how much the illness hinders them and leaves them to suffering.

In January 2024, he published Augmented Man: Future of Our Brains (Grasset), a reflection on the future of man facing the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). The psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher addresses the question of the confrontation between machines and humans, transhumanism or even the future with AI. In the words of its publisher: “In this vast fresco which brings science and literature into dialogue, it is notably a question of the neuron of an American star and of Don Quixote, of coffee-addicted writers and the revival of psychedelics, of inconsolable lovers and fruits of the tree of knowledge, Elon Musk's sow and Einstein's nap. Throughout this captivating epic, a revelation: it is finally scientifically demonstrated why reading makes you more intelligent. With such thinking, how could the academicians not be seduced? To date, there are only three seats left to be filled: Jean-Denis Bredin, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse and René de Obaldia.