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 in
the highly respected Journal de l'anatomie et de la physiologie.325 The effect of this article was to repatriate
the clinical study of hypnosis in France, retrieving it from the realm of popular pseudoscience into which it had
fallen during the first half of the 19th century. From the early 1880s, a steady stream of publications reporting
the use of hypnosis in the exploration of the unconscious emerged from the laboratories of Charcot and his
collaborators at the Salptrire in Paris326 and Bernheim and his coworkers at Nancy. 327 By 1889, when
Hericourt summarized the work to date,328 he could claim that the existence of unconscious mental activity
had been proven beyond reasonable doubt.
In this same year, Pierre Janet, a student of Charcot, published L'Automatisme psychologique,329 his doctoral
dissertation and the first of a series of treatises on manifestations of the unconscious that were to establish
his reputation as the founder of modern dynamic psychology. Janet was the first to articulate a theory of the
unconscious mind aimed at replacing the unsystematic, prescientific and largely metaphysical theories that
characterized 19th century Mesmerism; and he was the first to systematize careful, detailed clinical
descriptions of various manifestations of the unconscious. As Ellenberger put it in Discovery of the
Unconscious, 'Janet stands at the threshold of all modern dynamic psychiatry. His ideas have become so
widely 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 in
French in two installments. The first, published in 1892, dealt with symptomatology that Janet termed 'mental
stigmata.' Mental stigmata were symptoms essential to the hysterical condition, lasting about as long as the
disease lasted, and opaque to patients, who were unaware of the exact source of their discomfort. The mental
stigmata included anesthesias, amnesias, abulias, motor disturbances, and modifications of character.
The second installment, published in 1894, was devoted to 'mental accidents.' Mental accidents were
symptoms that were not necessarily characteristic of hysteria. They were relatively transient, accessible to
patients who were well aware of the nature (although not the source) of their discomfort, and included
subconscious 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 famous
patients, Bertha, Celestine, Isabelle, Justine, Lonie, Lucie, Marcelle, Margaret, and Maria, appeared
throughout the text, their symptoms described in exquisite detail. The fundamentally descriptive nature of the
book was in line with the strong positivistic spirit of the French science of Janet's day. Indeed, Janet took
great 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 a
general theory of hysteria that incorporated a view of the relationship between conscious and subconscious
mind. Janet's theory derived in part from his response to the perennial problem of accounting for the
transformation of sensation into perception. How were sensations, existing below the level of awareness and
fragmented 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) subconscious
phenomena...Secondly, there takes place a reunion, a synthesis of all these elementary phenomena, which
are 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 thoughts
already 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...not
transformed into personal perceptions...' 335 The degree to which subconscious sensations came to awareness
was termed by Janet, the 'extent of the field of consciousness;' 336 and the extent of the field of consciousness
was 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 of
the field of consciousness 'prevents those subject to it from connecting certain sensations with their
personality.'337 In anaesthesia, for example, the patient lost the ability to assimilate certain tactile and
muscular sensations to personal consciousness; in amnesia, forgotten events could not be brought to
consciousness 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 of
a multitude of subconscious processes (e.g., suggestions, fixed ideas) that engaged the mind without being
assimilated 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 consciousness
reflected the workings of subconscious process. This was, needless to say, a construction of mind that was to
influence many later theorists, including both William James 338 and Sigmund Freud. 339
325

Richet, C. (1875). Du somnambulisme provoqu. Journal de l'anatomie et de la physiologie normales et

pathologiques de l'homme et des animaux, 2, 348-77.
326

See Charcot, J-M. (1890). Oeuvres compltes. Leons sur les maladies du systme nerveux. Paris:
Progrs Mdicale.
327

Bernheim, H. (1884), De la suggestion dans l'tat hypnotique et dans l'tat de veille. Paris: Octave Doin;
Bernheim, H. (1886). De la suggestion et de ses applications la thrapeutique. Paris: Octave Doin; Bernheim,
H. (1891). Hypnotisme, suggestion, psychothrapie. Etudes nouvelles. Paris: Octave Doin. For a discussion of
the content and significance of Bernheim's De la suggestion, see the essay on Bernheim in this volume.
328

Hricourt, J. (1889). L'Activit 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). tat mental des hystriques. Les stigmates mentaux. Paris: Rueff; Janet, P. (1894). tat
mental des hystriques. Les accidents mentaux. Paris: Rueff.
332

Janet, P. (1901). The Mental State of Hystericals. A Study of Mental Stigmata and Mental Accidents. New
York: 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 Lowell
Lectures. New York: Scribner's.
339

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

Extracted from Classics in Psychology, 18551914: Historical Essays

ISBN 1 85506 703 X
Robert H. Wozniak, 1999
Classics in Psychology, 18551914 Historical Essays - Contents