La notion de secret pathogène a été attribuée par H. Ellenberger à un médecin autrichien, Moriz Benedikt, qui aurait perfectionné le traitement moral. Depuis les deux articles publiés il y a plus de 40ans par Ellenberger, il n’y a pas eu de nouvelle contribution sur la question. Nous nous proposons de compléter, voire de corriger son apport. Contrairement à ce que le lecteur français peut généralement lire, surtout dans les ouvrages d’inspiration psychanalytique, Benedikt n’était pas un obscur médecin de la seconde moitié du xix^e siècle. Nous avons repris les sources citées par H. Ellenberger et nous nous sommes également appuyés sur les sources directes telles que : actes de colloques, revues contemporaines, inventaire de ses travaux par Benedikt, ouvrages publiés par d’autres auteurs de son temps pour replacer la notion de secret dans la démarche d’ensemble du médecin viennois, en lien notamment avec ses recherches sur la criminalité et son goût pour les poètes. Nous présentons « Second Life », une conférence que Benedikt prononça à Rome en 1894 et dans laquelle il brosse le portrait d’un homme moderne trouvant, face à l’adversité du monde, refuge dans la vie secrète de l’âme, lieu d’accueil de sa capacité créatrice. Benedikt la qualifie de « paradis artificiel » permettant d’accueillir la créativité refusée par le dehors. Dans cette optique, c’est le monde qui est pathogène et non le secret. Enfin, nous posons la question du rapport d’Ellenberger avec C.-G. Jung qui, plus significativement que Benedikt, lequel était opposé au traitement moral qu’il considérait comme une supercherie, fut adepte d’une prise en charge des patients passant par la confession du secret. La réactualisation des données liant Benedikt et le secret pathogène permet de dégager le lien entre secret et criminalité partagé par un grand nombre de savants de la fin du xix^e siècle et la proposition novatrice de Benedikt sur une aire psychique intérieure, aire du secret, constitutive du psychisme et d’une importance vitale pour l’individu.

The concept of “pathogenic secret” was assigned by H. Ellenberger to an Austrian physician, Moriz Benedikt (1835–1920), who would have perfected the moral treatment. Whereas the notion of pathogenic secrets was then seen as relevant to hysterical conditions and their treatments, its relevance and scope have by now been widened to such other fields as medically assisted reproduction with gamete donation, HIV and transgenerational family therapies. Since the two articles published by Ellenberger over 40 years, there was no new contribution on the issue. Our research aims to update the data and to complement them.

We resumed the sources cited by H. Ellenberger and we also relied on the direct sources, such as conference proceedings, contemporary journals, inventory of his work by Moriz Benedikt, books published by other authors of his time, to replace the notion of secret in the overall approach of the Viennese physician, particularly in connection with his research on crime and his taste for poetry and dramas.

Contrary to what French readers can usually read, Moriz Benedikt was not an obscure doctor in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was an important physician of the “Belle Époque” of criminal anthropology whose works were referring. His research on “secret” aims to a global approach to the individual and to better prevent the criminal mind. As a doctor, he was opposed to moral treatment he considered as trickery. He advocated by common sense, after removal of an organic cause, to seek what the patient could meet as annoyance or what could have caused him to fear. While H. Ellenberger sought to register Moriz Benedikt as a precursor of dynamic psychiatry and separate his work on the crime from his work on the secret, it appears that these works form a coherent whole. Moreover, reading a Benedikt conference, “Second Life” allowed us to show that his contribution must be seen in the light of the then prevailing preoccupation for the “for intérieur” and he is connected with the researches of these times on it. Contrary to the interpretation by Ellenberger, Benedikt saw the second inner life as a refuge of modern man facing the adversity of the world. Benedikt called it “artificial paradise” in which the creativity refused by the outside world can be accommodated. In this context, it is the world which is pathogenic and not secret.

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.