Contribution à l'histoire de la notion de secret pathogène : à propos de Moriz Benedikt

Updating our perception of the link between Moriz Benedikt and pathogenic secret is timely. It reveals two new perspectives: the link between crime and secret, also explored by many scholars in the late nineteenth century; and the innovative proposal by Benedikt of an inner psychic area, an area of secrecy constitutive of the psyche and being of vital importance to the individual - in an approach not unsimilar to that of practicing clinicians, such as Masud Khan or D.W. Winicott. Finally, we ask the question of the relation of Ellenberger with C.-G. Jung who, more significantly than Benedikt, stated that the prior for care was the confession of his secret by the patient.