1. Degeneration vs. Progeneration
Science and Pseudoscience

2. Cultural Origins of Degeneration Theory
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: degeneration of the aristocracy as moral, political, and social critique: aristocracy mannered, decadent, effeminate, immoral, diseased
European Romanticism
-- association of madness and artistic creativity
-- infatuation with Romantic science and pseudosciences: physiognomy and phrenology

3. Psychiatric Origins of Degeneration Theory: Benedict-Augustin Morel (1809-1873)
Worked on theory of degeneration , publication of theory dominated French psychiatry for 100 years
Argued that mental illness and social deviance hereditary: acquired traits fixed in germ plasm
Described 4-stage progression of generational degeneracy
No specific pathology passed on; rather, susceptibility of nervous system to disturbances
Identified dementia praecox, in 1908 renamed schizophrenia

4. Influence of Morel’s theory
Interest in how toxic substances (alcohol) affect progeny -- fetal alcohol syndrome
Established foundation for research in eugenics, the improvement of human (or a given race or ethnic group) by means of control of fertility (Nazis)
Many mental illnesses have hereditary component, albeit genetic

5. Literary Origins of Degeneration Theory: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Son of dissolute actor and consumptive actress, genius, alcoholic, drug addict, syphilitic
Short stories portraying crime, obsession, madness, and delusion
Fall of the House of Usher
Interest in pseudo-sciences, phrenology and physiognomy
Ignored in U.S., extremely popular with French literary avant-garde

6. Heirs to Poe’s literary degeneration
Charles Baudelaire, poet, literary critic, first modern poet -- advocate of art for art’s sake, author of Les Fleurs du mal
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Poe favorite American writer, roman-feulliton (crime, mystery)

7. Heirs to Morel’s degeneration theory: Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)
Founder of Italian School of Positivist Criminology
Popularized idea that criminality is biologically determined, that criminals had devolved, evolutionary regression
Born criminal identified by atavistic stigmata that could be detected and measured
Believed that whites most evolved
Women less criminal because more passive

8. Max Nordau (1849-1923) Simon Südfeld
Social critic, Zionist leader
Entartung (Degeneration), 1892 argued that civilization itself was degenerating
Moral and social critique of bourgeois rationalist aimed at conduct, morality, art of new avant-garde
Freud first to challenge degeneration theory
Irony: Jewish proponents, Nazi adherents