Henri Laborit

Henri Laborit (November 21, 1914 - May 18, 1995) was a French physician, writer and philosopher.

He was born in Hanoi, Vietnam and started his career as a neurosurgeon in the Marine and then moved on to fundamental research. He won the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1957. Laborit later because a research head at Boucicault Hospital in Paris.

His interests included psychotropic drugs, eutonology, and memory. He pioneered the use of dopamine antagonists to reduce shock in injured soldiers. His observation that people treated with these drugs showed reduced interest in their surroundings led to their later use as antipsychotics. He was also the first researcher to study GHB, in the early 1960s. He hoped that it would be an orally bioavailable precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA, but it proved to have other uses and was later discovered as an endogenous neurotransmitter.

Cultural references
He appeared in the 1980 Alain Resnais film Mon oncle d'Amérique, which is built around the ideas of Laborit and uses the stories of three people to illustrate theories deriving from evolutionary psychology regarding the relationship of self and society.

The French-born American market researcher Clotaire Rapaille considered Laborit to be an important influence in his work.