Albert Dadas

Albert Dadas, Albert the absconder

Albert Dadas one of the first people was reached of the Folie of the absconder, or ambulatory Automatisme.

Its name was retained among the other insane absconders, since its adventures were rocambolesques. Albert Dadas was an employee of a gas company with Bordeaux in the years 1880. Unconsciously, it rose certain mornings and started to go. Its tours carried out it until Paris, Nantes, Lyon, in Russia and even until Algérie.

Today the Folie of the absconder is disappeared. What leads certain researchers to think that the madness is a social construction, i.e. a mental disease exists only under precise conditions socio-histories. Once these conditions are not present any more, this form of mental disease disappears. This theory is defended by the professor Ian Hacking.

Ian Hacking, professor with the Collège de France was devoted to this odd phenomenon which the madness of the absconder in his book is : The Insane travellers (2002)

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