Pierre Janet : the phobia of everyday life -- Flaubert : the revenge of art on life -- The cult of the unreal : Nodier and romantic monomania -- Between Kant and Hegel : Baudelaire's dialogue with obsession -- Middlemarch : abstraction and empathy -- Musings on hypochondria : Thomas Mann's magic thermometer -- Elias Canetti's Auto-da-fé : the scholarly malady -- The cure in the disease : Nina Bouraoui's melancholic imperative -- Voyeuristic monomania : Sophie Calle's rituals.