Books / Trauma, body & expressive
L’Automatisme psychologique: Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine
Pierre Janet’s 1889 study describes experiments and clinical cases involving automatism, awareness and his account of psychological dissociation.
Book details
Author of listed edition: Pierre Janet
Edition: First edition (1889)
Publisher: Félix Alcan
Edition year: 1889
Original title: L’Automatisme psychologique: Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine
Language and origin: French
Form and genre: Clinical & Theoretical Monograph
Level: Advanced
Historical era: Pre-1919 · Asylum Reform & Early Psychoanalysis
Covers: Janet’s experimental and clinical observations of automatism; His account of subconscious activity and psychological dissociation; Hypnosis, suggestion and historical case reports
APA 7th reference: Janet, P. (1889). L’automatisme psychologique: Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine [Psychological automatism: Essay of experimental psychology on the inferior forms of human activity]. Félix Alcan.
What it is
Published in French in 1889, L’Automatisme psychologique presents Pierre Janet’s clinical and experimental work on automatism and awareness. A two-volume English translation was published separately in 2021.
What it covers
Janet described total and partial automatisms and proposed ideas about psychological dissociation and subconscious activity. These are historical interpretations of observations, not established explanations of every dissociative symptom.
Historical cases and later influence
Janet discussed individual cases, including Marie, in which he used hypnosis and suggestion. Historical case reports do not by themselves establish that a recalled memory is accurate, identify a general cause of symptoms, or demonstrate treatment effectiveness.
Reading level and limits
This advanced historical work uses the clinical language and assumptions of its time. This entry draws on a library catalogue and selected later historical accounts; the complete book was not reviewed for this entry.
Paired academic and clinical scholarship
Paired work: Pierre Janet and the Breakdown of Adaptation in Psychological Trauma (Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, 1989)
Reference: van der Kolk, B. A., & van der Hart, O. (1989). Pierre Janet and the breakdown of adaptation in psychological trauma. American Journal of Psychiatry, 146(12), 1530–1540.
A historical and clinical discussion of Janet’s ideas about trauma and dissociation. The paper interprets his work; it does not establish a universal mechanism or comparative superiority over other theories.
Source-mapped claims and evidence notes
Claim 1: Janet described automatism and proposed an account of psychological dissociation in clinical and experimental observations. (The library record identifies the 1889 work and makes a digitised copy available; the complete text was not reviewed for this entry.) [Source 1: Janet, P. (1889). L’automatisme psychologique: Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine. Félix Alcan.]
Claim 2: In the case of Marie, Janet described using hypnosis and suggestion to alter an idea associated with a distressing experience. (A later historical discussion reports Janet’s account. A single case does not establish that a recovered memory is accurate or that a treatment is generally effective.) [Source 4: Orne, M. T., Whitehouse, W. G., Dinges, D. F., & Orne, E. C. (1988). Reconstructing memory through hypnosis: Forensic and clinical implications. In H. M. Pettinati (Ed.), Hypnosis and memory (pp. 21–63). Guilford Press.]
Sources and inspection notes
Supports: Library catalogue identifies Janet, the French title, Paris publisher and 1889 publication, and links a digitised copy; the complete text was not reviewed.
Supports: Publisher catalogue identifies a separate 2021 two-volume English edition; its ISBN is not the identifier of the 1889 French edition.
Supports: Historical and clinical interpretation of Janet’s trauma and dissociation theories; not evidence of a universally established mechanism.
Supports: Historical discussion of Janet’s use of hypnotic suggestion with Marie and research limitations concerning literal memory recovery.