International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 38

Criminology Comes Back to Pierre Janet
become something that regressively confines effort, which takes refuge in inability,
in mania that may go as far as tics, 56 in interminable stubbornness, 57 in perpetual
efforts, like compensating for the lack of adequate action through the “exaggerated
need to score a victory for one’s pride,” 58 or else by refusing to relax, to rest, or to
wander, 59 or, on the other hand, by halting in meticulous partial paralyses and in
a lack of regard for oneself that may go as far as self-disgust. 60 When no lesion is
detectable, in their extreme configuration, these behaviors are translated, according
to Janet, by a narrowing of the mind (i.e. a weakening of the synthesis or consciousness)
when is then reinforced by a decrease in tension, or else fatigue and torpor.
In short, there can be multiple causes of powerlessness to act—sexual disorder
being, so to speak, one of its consequences, but not the sole or systematic cause.
In Search of a New Unifying Theory
Enriching Janetian psychological analysis may therefore be of value to current
research that aims, as in theoretical physics, to develop a new unifying
theory to explain the dynamics of the human psyche.
Janet believed he had captured it in four feelings, which are vital in the psychological
sense (i.e. they involve mental rather than physical force). These accompany
and feel action all the time: what must be expended as effort, what it brings
as joy, what it costs as fatigue, and the possible sadness that arises if the action fails
or does not emerge. If these four key feelings are excessively present or if they are
absent, if they are too strong or too weak, trauma par excellence develops. (Janet
groups all the related symptoms under the term psychasthenia.) It is this multidimensional
analysis of trauma that connects Janet to Charcot. Admittedly, this close
link between Charcot and Janet did not please everyone, particularly neurologist
Jules Déjerine. 61 Why? Because some of Charcot’s students developed explanations
based on metalloscopy, 62 and because he was working during the height of
scientism, which pushed behaviorism to consider stimulus–response interactions
alone. Janet shared with Charcot the idea that psychology should be distinct from
physiology. But not separate from it: after all, Charcot founded the Société de psychologie
physiologique, 63 and Janet received a doctorate in medicine.
56 Janet, De l’angoisse à l’extase, tome 2, 142–43.
57 Ibid., 145.
58 Ibid., 171.
59 Ibid., 153.
60 Ibid., 161.
61 Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic
Psychiatry (New York: Basic, 2005), 408.
62 Ibid., 400.
63 Ibid., 365.
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