Angelos Katakouzenos (1902–1982): A Lifework of Neurology and Art

Angelos Katakouzenos, a Greek neurologist and prolific medical writer at the beginning of the 20th century, belonged to a group of artists and scholars that formed the “generation of the 30s,” a cultural movement that emerged after World War I and introduced modernism in Greek art and literature. Born in 1902, Katakouzenos studied medicine in France at the Universities of Montpellier and Paris, where he trained in neurology and psychiatry under Georges Guillain, Henri Claude, Jean-Athanase Sicard, Pierre Marie, Clovis Vincent and Théophile Alajouanine. In Paris, he attended to Freud’s patients, collaborating with the psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, while he was introduced to the contemporary avant-garde movements of this time, developing long-lasting friendships with artists and intellectuals, including Marc Chagall and Tériade. Although Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Paris, Commandeur of the Légion d’honneur and founder of the first neuropsychiatric clinics in Greece, Katakouzenos lived far from the limelight. Despite his numerous publications, his scientific work remained largely unacknowledged. Yet, as a psychoanalyst he gained international fame and treated patients including William Faulkner who later would write, “To the wise scientist, the in-depth judge of the human soul, my friend Dr. Katakouzenos, who has helped me like no one else to redeem myself from the tortuous questions that troubled me for years – from the depths of my heart, many, very many thanks”. In this paper, the rediscovery of Katakouzenos’s remarkable work in the field of neuroscience aims to tell the story of a great physician whose lifework in bridging art and science may, in retrospect, reinstate him as one of the most captivating neurologists of the 20th century.