Multiplicando a consciência: a dissociação e suas consequências segundo Pierre Janet

Abstract

The French psychologists of the XIX century used, as one of its main methods, the exploration of the altered states of consciousness and mental illness to achieve a better understanding of the normal human mind. Among this French psychologists, Pierre Janet is a central figure. His studies on hysteria and hypnotism gave birth to his conceptions about psychological weakness, dissociation and unconscious activity. His theories held to a new understanding of mental activity occurring outside of conscious awareness, contributed to the development of the dynamic psychiatry and, specially, seemed to conciliate the two divided trends of the XIX century French psychology (the medical and the philosophical one). Even though Pierre Janet be an important French psychologist, in Brazil, there is a lack of studies about him. Because of it, our aim was to: (i) find out when Janet started to use the concept “dissociation”, its definition, and its changes; (ii) show how did Janet conclude about the existence of dissociation of consciousness, (iii) point out the relationship between the dissociation and the mental weakness, (iv) explain the mechanism of dissociation according to Janet, (v) describe what happens to the elements dissociated to normal consciousness and (vi) show the role of dissociation on hysteria, hypnotism and double personality according him. To achieve our goal we analyzed Pierre Janet’s works between 1885 and 1894 (3 books and 17 articles). As a result we noticed that the concept dissociation appeared for the first time in the article of 1887 L'anesthésie systématisée et la dissociation des phénomènes psychologiques. In this article, Janet explains that dissociation happens when an element, a memory or a sensation, is not synthesized to self, being, consequently, removed to the normal consciousness. However, from 1889 and beyond Janet substituted the term dissociation for another one, desegregation, keeping for both the same meaning. The mechanism of dissociation is described by Janet while he is explaining the hysterical symptoms. According to him, its symptoms (anesthesia, amnesia and movement disturbances) are due to a problem to synthesize sensations, memories and information about the environment (respectively) to self. This elements which were not synthesized can continue existing outside the normal consciousness, isolated or grouped, in a more or less complex system, being able to originate a secondary personality. These elements can affect the hysterical psychism giving birth to the hysterical accidents as contractures, the hysterical crises, the delirium, the catalepsies, the somnambulism and the unconscious acts. To sum up, it is possible to conclude that dissociation in a fundamental concept of the initial works of Pierre Janet and it is an essential concept to understand his views of hypnotism, hysteria and double personality.