Jean Delay
| Jean Delay | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
14 November 1907 Bayonne, France |
| Died | 29 May 1987 (aged 79) Paris, France |
| Fields | Psychiatry, literature |
| Institutions | |
| Education | Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital |
| Alma mater | Sorbonne |
| Known for | First studies of the effects of chlorpromazine, writing |
| Notable awards | Commander of the Legion of Honor, Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit, and Commander of Arts and Letters |
| Children | Florence Delay, Claude Delay |
Jean Delay (14 November 1907, Bayonne – 29 May 1987, Paris) was a French psychiatrist, neurologist, writer, and a member of the Académie française (Chair 17).
His assistant Pierre Deniker conducted a test of chlorpromazine on the male mental ward where Delay worked, and the two published their findings (quickly, with what has been called academic gamesmanship) in 1952. Chlorpromazine turned out to be the first effective drug treatment for mental illness and it had a profound effect on the mentally ill and mental asylums.
In 1968–1970, student revolutionaries attacked his offices, and Delay was forced into retirement from medicine. In later life, he lived as a writer.
The son of Maurice Delay, a successful surgeon and mayor of Bayonne, at age fourteen Delay earned a baccalaureate in philosophy. He studied medicine in Paris. After studying in hospitals for twenty years, especially the teaching of Pierre Janet and Georges Dumas, he turned to psychiatry. He also specialized in neurology at the Salpetriere. He wrote his doctoral thesis on astereognosis in 1935. He then undertook the study at the Sorbonne and in 1942 wrote his thesis on diseases of memory. He received degrees in medicine, literature, and philosophy.
Jean Delay was the father of Florence Delay, of the Académie française (Seat 10), and of , novelist and psychoanalyist.
He received training in the psychiatry clinic of Henri Ey at the . There he became the chair of the clinic of mental illness in 1946. He remained at the hospital until 1970 when he retired from medicine. With Ey, Delay organized the First World Congress of Psychiatry and founded the World Psychiatric Association (WPA). Today, the WPA awards a Jean Delay Prize every three years.
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