Biologie et structure

by Henri Laborit

Une étude des bases biologiques actuelles du comportement humain montre pourquoi et comment celui-ci est entièrement dominé par les jugements de valeur et une sémantique inadaptée. Henri Laborit tente, à partir des connaissances biologiques contemporaines, de dégager une méthodologie pouvant servir de cadre à une science de l'action. Tout étant lié, de la physique moléculaire à la sociologie et à l'économie politique, le rôle de l'Homme serait d'abord la recherche des structures, c'est-à-dire des relations existant entre les éléments qui composent les aspects variés de l'ensemble spatio-temporel auquel il appartient.

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1987

About the author

Henri Laborit was a French surgeon, researcher, writer and philosopher. Animated by a robustly nonconformist spirit, he maintained an independence from academia and never sought to produce the orderly results that science requires of its adherents. His laboratory was self-funded for decades and allowed him to pursue his interdisciplinary interests. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of systems thinking and complexity theory in France.

He won the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1957. Laborit later became a research head at Boucicault Hospital in Paris.

His interests included psychotropic drugs, eutonology, and memory. He pioneered the use of dopamine antagonists to reduce shock in injured soldiers. His observation that people treated with these drugs showed reduced interest in their surroundings led to their later use as antipsychotics.

He was also the first researcher to study GHB, in the early 1960s. He hoped that it would be an orally bioavailable precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA, but it proved to have other uses and was later discovered as an endogenous neurotransmitter.

He appeared in the 1980 Alain Resnais film Mon oncle d'Amérique, which is built around the ideas of Laborit and uses the stories of three people to illustrate theories deriving from evolutionary psychology regarding the relationship of self and society. This movie includes short sequences of rat experiments that are used to illustrate the behaviors of some of the characters in different situations (such as inhibition in the action).

The French-born American market researcher Clotaire Rapaille considered Laborit to be an important influence in his work.

The 1991 Italian film Mediterraneo begins with a quote from Laborit which, translated, means "In times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and keep dreaming."