Classics in Psychology

Robert H. Wozniak - Bryn Mawr College

Pierre Janet: The Mental State of Hystericals (1892-4; English 1901)

In 1875, the renowned French physiologist, Charles Richet, published an article on artificial somnambulism inthe highly respected Journal de l'anatomie et de la physiologie.325 The effect of this article was to repatriatethe clinical study of hypnosis in France, retrieving it from the realm of popular pseudoscience into which it hadfallen during the first half of the 19th century. From the early 1880s, a steady stream of publications reportingthe use of hypnosis in the exploration of the unconscious emerged from the laboratories of Charcot and hiscollaborators at the Salptrire in Paris326 and Bernheim and his coworkers at Nancy.327 By 1889, whenHericourt summarized the work to date,328 he could claim that the existence of unconscious mental activityhad been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

In this same year, Pierre Janet, a student of Charcot, published L'Automatisme psychologique,329 his doctoraldissertation and the first of a series of treatises on manifestations of the unconscious that were to establishhis reputation as the founder of modern dynamic psychology. Janet was the first to articulate a theory of theunconscious mind aimed at replacing the unsystematic, prescientific and largely metaphysical theories thatcharacterized 19th century Mesmerism; and he was the first to systematize careful, detailed clinicaldescriptions of various manifestations of the unconscious. As Ellenberger put it in Discovery of theUnconscious, 'Janet stands at the threshold of all modern dynamic psychiatry. His ideas have become sowidely known that their true origin is often unrecognized and attributed to others.'330

This is especially true of the ideas promulgated in Janet's second major work, tat mental des hystriques.331

Translated into English in 1901 as The Mental State of Hystericals,332 the tat mental originally appeared inFrench in two installments. The first, published in 1892, dealt with symptomatology that Janet termed 'mentalstigmata.' Mental stigmata were symptoms essential to the hysterical condition, lasting about as long as thedisease lasted, and opaque to patients, who were unaware of the exact source of their discomfort. The mentalstigmata included anesthesias, amnesias, abulias, motor disturbances, and modifications of character.

The second installment, published in 1894, was devoted to 'mental accidents.' Mental accidents weresymptoms that were not necessarily characteristic of hysteria. They were relatively transient, accessible topatients who were well aware of the nature (although not the source) of their discomfort, and includedsubconscious acts, fixed ideas, emotional attacks, tics, ecstasies, somnambulisms, and deliriums.

The Mental State of Hystericals was a masterpiece of clinical description. Some of Janet's most famouspatients, Bertha, Celestine, Isabelle, Justine, Lonie, Lucie, Marcelle, Margaret, and Maria, appearedthroughout the text, their symptoms described in exquisite detail. The fundamentally descriptive nature of thebook was in line with the strong positivistic spirit of the French science of Janet's day. Indeed, Janet tookgreat pains to eschew anything that might be construed as metaphysical analysis.

Nonetheless, this was also a work known for its theoretical contributions. The most important of these was ageneral theory of hysteria that incorporated a view of the relationship between conscious and subconsciousmind. Janet's theory derived in part from his response to the perennial problem of accounting for thetransformation of sensation into perception. How were sensations, existing below the level of awareness andfragmented both within and between sensory modalities, synthesized into a unified, personal consciousness?

In answer to this question Janet offered a theory which was both physiological and psychodynamic. 'First,there is produced in the mind, in the cortical cells of the brain...a very large number of small, elementary,psychological phenomena, the results of...innumerable external excitations...(these are) subconsciousphenomena...Secondly, there takes place a reunion, a synthesis of all these elementary phenomena, whichare combined among themselves...(and then assimilated) to the vast and prior notion of personality...(to yield)a clearer and more complex consciousness.'333 Sensations entered the field of consciousness, in other words,through the dual processes of cortical synthesis and active assimilation to that 'enormous mass of thoughtsalready constituted into a system'334 which was the personality.

But not all sensations entered consciousness. As Janet put it, even 'with the best-constituted man there must

exist a crowd of elementary sensations ...(that) remain what they are-namely, subconscious sensations, real,without doubt, and able to play a considerable role in the psychological life of the individual; but...nottransformed into personal perceptions...'335 The degree to which subconscious sensations came to awarenesswas termed by Janet, the 'extent of the field of consciousness;'336 and the extent of the field of consciousnesswas widely variable both between individuals and within a given individual over time.

In hysteria, the field of consciousness was subject to a pathological degree of contraction. This contraction ofthe field of consciousness 'prevents those subject to it from connecting certain sensations with theirpersonality.'337 In anaesthesia, for example, the patient lost the ability to assimilate certain tactile andmuscular sensations to personal consciousness; in amnesia, forgotten events could not be brought toconsciousness even though they were available under hypnosis or through automatic writing.

Indeed, pathological contraction of the field of consciousness could leave the mind subject to the vagaries ofa multitude of subconscious processes (e.g., suggestions, fixed ideas) that engaged the mind without beingassimilated to the personality, that influenced perception, in other words, without themselves being perceived.Here was a powerful new conception of mind, mind as a psychodynamic system in which consciousnessreflected the workings of subconscious process. This was, needless to say, a construction of mind that was toinfluence many later theorists, including both William James338 and Sigmund Freud.339

325 Richet, C. (1875). Du somnambulisme provoqué. Journal de l'anatomie et de la physiologie normales etpathologiques de l'homme et des animaux, 2, 348-77.

326 See Charcot, J-M. (1890). Oeuvres complètes. Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux. Paris:Progrès Médicale.

327 Bernheim, H. (1884), De la suggestion dans l'état hypnotique et dans l'état de veille. Paris: Octave Doin;Bernheim, H. (1886). De la suggestion et de ses applications la thérapeutique. Paris: Octave Doin; Bernheim,H. (1891). Hypnotisme, suggestion, psychothrapie. Etudes nouvelles. Paris: Octave Doin. For a discussion ofthe content and significance of Bernheim's De la suggestion, see the essay on Bernheim in this volume.

328 Héricourt, J. (1889). L'Activité inconscient de l'esprit. Revue scientifique, 3me series, 26, 2, 257-68.

329 Janet, P. (1889). L'Automatisme psycholoqique. Paris: Flix Alcan.

330 Ellenberger, H.F. (1970). Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry.New York: Basic Books, p. 406.

331 Janet, P. (1892). État mental des hystériques. Les stigmates mentaux. Paris: Rueff; Janet, P. (1894). Étatmental des hystériques. Les accidents mentaux. Paris: Rueff.

332 Janet, P. (1901). The Mental State of Hystericals. A Study of Mental Stigmata and Mental Accidents. NewYork: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

333 Janet (1901), op. cit., p. 36.

334 Ibid., p. 35.

335 Ibid., p. 37.

336 Ibid., p. 38.

337 Ibid., p. 40.

338 See, for example, Taylor, E. (1983). William James on Exceptional Mental States, The 1896 LowellLectures. New York: Scribner's.

339 For an analysis of the relationship between Janet and Freud, see Ellenberger, op. cit.

Extracted from Classics in Psychology, 1855–1914: Historical Essays ISBN 1 85506 703 X © Robert H. Wozniak, 1999

Classics in Psychology, 1855–1914 Historical Essays - Contents