International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 34

A Chronology of Janet’s Work
Criminology Comes Back to Pierre Janet
Janet had apparently planned this approach well before 1885. He intended,
for instance, to write a thesis on hallucinations when he obtained his aggregation
in 1882. 31 He later published a number of articles (which neurologist
Jean-Martin Charcot noted), followed by his thesis, L’automatisme psychologique
(1889), and then a book, L’état mental des hystériques (1893), for which Charcot
wrote the preface (as Serge Nicolas points out), 32 and which had a decisive impact
on research into neurosis.
Freud did not disagree. In An Autobiographical Study, he wrote:
I proposed to [Breuer] that we should issue a joint publication. At
first he objected vehemently, but in the end he gave way, especially
since, in the meantime, Janet’s works had anticipated some of his
results, such as the tracing back of hysterical symptoms to events
in the patient’s life, and their removal by means of hypnotic reproduction
in statu nascendi. In 1893 we issued a preliminary communication,
“On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena,”
and in 1895 there followed our book, Studies on Hysteria. 33
Nor should we be surprised that, in 1913, Janet quoted something he had written
in 1893, when L’état mental des hystériques was published:
We are pleased that Messrs. Breuer and Freud have recently verified
the interpretation we offered long ago of idées fixes among
hysterics. 34
Between 1885 and 1888, Janet had already published a whole series of articles
that would be preparatory for these two main later works (L’automatisme and
L’état mental) in Ribot’s Revue philosophique and, notably, the journal of Charcot’s
Société de psychologie physiologique (1885, 1886). 35 These articles relate to catalepsy,
somnambulism, suggestions, dreams, habits, passions, and so on. Furthermore,
in 1886, he published an article titled “Les actes inconscients et le dédoublement
de la personnalité pendant le somnambulisme provoqué” (Unconscious Acts
and the Splitting of the Personality During Induced Sleepwalking) in the Revue
31 Serge Nicolas, introduction to Janet, Conférences à la Salpêtrière, 7.
32 Ibid., 11.
33 Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and
the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1950). Published online as part of Sigmund Freud—29 Major
Books and Articles, https://archive.org/details/SigmundFreud/page/n1, 4199.
34 Janet, La psychanalyse de Freud, 58.
35 Nicolas in Janet, Conférences à la Salpêtrière, 7.
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