L’auto-expérimentation, expérience de soi sur soi, a contribué à de nombreuses découvertes médicales et à la naissance de la psychopharmacologie. Au-delà de ces riches histoires, l’auto-expérimentation de médicaments psychotropes commercialisés existe dans le champ psychiatrique. Les motivations à cette pratique n’ont toutefois jamais été étudiées.

Vingt-quatre psychiatres ont été sollicités pour un entretien semi-directif, afin de connaître les motivations d’une éventuelle auto-expérimentation.

La motivation centrale repérée à l’auto-expérimentation contemporaine de médicament psychotrope par le psychiatre est la tentative de se représenter les effets suscités, principalement les effets secondaires. Certains fonctionnements psychiques et la recherche de bénéfices secondaires favorisent cette pratique. À l’inverse, le jugement de dangerosité ou d’inutilité de l’expérience éloigne de sa réalisation. Enfin, une dimension folklorique ainsi que des enjeux groupaux et intergénérationnels sont présents.

Cette pratique toujours actuelle questionne nos conceptions du médicament psychotrope et de la maladie mentale. La forte ambivalence du monde médical envers cette pratique relativement taboue interroge les fondements épistémologiques de notre discipline.

Auto-experimentation, experimentation on oneself by oneself, is a relatively unknown practice, albeit one playing a central part in the origin of medical discoveries. The birth of psychopharmacology can be found within this history of auto-experimentation. Beyond the context of intermittent discoveries of chemical substance, the auto-experimentation by psychiatrists persists in an informal manner with psychotropic medications currently on the market. Nevertheless, this contemporary practice seems not to have been hitherto studied.

Twenty-four French psychiatrists have been asked to answer a semi-structured interview, with the aim of discovering the motivations behind past auto-experimentation. This sample is not representative of the total population of French psychiatrists, but it is quite heterogeneous in age, gender and manner of practice for this exploratory research work.

Twenty-three psychiatrists participated in the interview, and one refused. The various motivations leading to auto-experimentation amongst the psychiatrists are principally linked to attempts to better understand the effects of the psychotropic medications prescribed, chiefly their side effects. The usage of auto-experimentation can be facilitated by the curiosity of the psychiatrist, certain psychological functioning (“sensation-seeking” or linked to specific personality traits) and can conceal a secondary benefit attempt (an auto-therapeutic endeavour, a financial benefit during a clinical study, or even mimicking a psychic illness for a precise purpose). Fears, belief of uselessness or a denial of the question distance the psychiatrist from auto-experimentation. Lastly, collective factors such as folkloric or group elements and intergenerational dimensions influence the usage of this practice.

Despite the variety in motivations and the obvious difference in psychotropic experience between the psychiatrists performing these experiments and the unwell patient, this practice questions our conceptions of psychotropic medications and mental illness. The epistemological foundations of our discipline are thusly tested, as is our relationship to knowledge and how we transmit it. The medical world's strong ambivalence to this relatively taboo practice deserves to be put into perspective with the current psychiatric model, which seeks to be scientific.