ROBIN (Gilbert). - Lot 271

ROBIN (Gilbert). 1893–1967. Child neuropsychiatrist and writer. Autograph manuscript signed “Gil Robin.” No place, November 1924. 1½ pages, in-4 format. Violet ink on cream-colored vellum. An interesting literary and scientific manuscript constituting an excerpt from *Voyage à Genève*, intended for publication in *Cahiers du Savant*. Presented in the form of a dialogue, the text recreates a scene reminiscent of a psychoanalytic session, blending clinical observation with poetic reflection on the soul and childhood. The passage explores the intimate nature of personality, describing childhood as a “unity like a beach,” marked by delicate and diffuse emotions, to the point of suggesting a soul that has become a “slippery surface” on which nothing can be permanently inscribed. This writing, straddling the boundary between literature and psychology, attests to the growing influence of psychoanalysis in French intellectual circles between the two world wars. Gilbert Robin, known by the pseudonyms “Gil Robin” and “Doctor G. Durtal,” was one of the first French physicians to take an interest in psychoanalysis and to meet Sigmund Freud (1928). Close to philosophical circles and the early days of Surrealism, he sought to broaden the understanding of mental disorders beyond the strictly psychiatric framework.