Introduction générale*

This article is the completed introduction of a book that Lantéri-Laura was writing at the moment of his untimely death in 2004. The book was to be called “Psychiatric semiology: historical research and a critique of its foundations”. The long introduction breaks down into two parts. In the first part, the author deals with the historical development of medical clinic from ancient Greece to the modern day, he insists on the importance of the role played by “l'École de Paris” (end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century) for the birth of a medical semiology. The consequent organisation of neurological semiology (second half of nineteenth century) is also sketched out as is the question of secondary medical examinations. In the second part the author explains his choices of linguistic structural tools (Saussure and Hjelmslev) for his project of analysis of medical, neurological and psychiatric semiologies. He underlines the inanity of the idea of a complete examination and defines a concept that will be useful for the future: that of regional espistemology.