 His knowledge of medicine and psychiatry brought him to study the history of melancholia (notably in the "Trois Fureurs", 1974).He was the first scholar to publish work (in 1964) on Ferdinand de Saussure's study of anagrams.Jean Starobinski was a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (a component of the Institut de France) and other French, European and American learned academies.