Janet
Janet, Pierre
Influences on
Psychiatry
Psychiatry. The term psychiatry comes from the Greek words psyche, meaning mind or soul, and iatros, meaning doctor. Psychiatry is the branch of medicine concerned with the causes, diagnosis, classification and treatment of mental disorders. For example, presenting symptoms might involve disturbed emotion, thought, perception or behaviour. As a medical speciality, it is distinguished from neurology, the study of diseases of identifiable parts of the nervous system. However, there is a clear overlap between these two specialities, as both deal with brain function. In some countries, the two specialities are combined to form neuropsychiatry. Neuropsychiatry is also sometimes defined as that branch of psychiatry which looks at how neural processes involved in particular brain disorders (e.g. brain tumours, dementia) can produce psychiatric disorders, and how the resulting cognitive, emotional and behavioural effects can be diagnosed and treated. It is clear from the above description that psychiatrists follow quite a different educational route than psychologists – all psychiatrists must first qualify as doctors through full medical training, before specialising in psychiatry. Psychologists, of course, are not (generally) medically trained. However, clinical psychologists do treat mental disorders, but use more psychologically oriented therapies such as cognitive or behaviour therapy rather than medical interventions. \nAlthough psychiatrists do also make use of psychologically-based therapies at times, their different background and training predisposes them towards a 'medical model' of mental illness, not infrequently seeing more 'physical' methods of treatment as appropriate. Examples of these would be chemical intervention via drug therapies (e.g. affecting particular neurotransmitters in the brain), psychosurgery, and electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). \nPsychiatrists can also play a legal role in decisions involving enforced hospitalisation of individuals judged to be 'disturbed'.
Neuroses
Along with psychosis, neurosis is one of the terms used to describe mental disorders which do not obviously stem from an injury to, or physical deterioration of, the nervous system. Neurotic disorders are those which do not involve hallucination, delusion, or a loss of insight, whereas psychotic disorders do involve these elements and are thus considered more total and more serious. Examples of neuroses are phobias, anxiety and panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as most depression.
Janet proposed a psychological system that sought to explain both normal and abnormal behaviour from childhood to old age. As individuals develop they move up a hierarchy of progressively more complex levels of organization.
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There has been some renewed interest in his work following the awareness of child abuse and the acknowledgement of post-traumatic stress syndromes, as Janet proposed that traumatic events could result in dissociation or hysteria and that the symptoms could be alleviated by bringing the memories and feelings associated with these events into consciousness.
After graduating, his appointments included director of a new experimental psychology laboratory at La Salpêtrière hospital, then director of studies in experimental psychology at the Sorbonne, and until his retirement in 1935 professor of experimental and comparative psychology at the Collège de France.
Pierre Marie Félix Janet (1859-1947), born in Paris, came from an established upper-middle class family. He studied philosophy at the highly selective École Normale Supérieure, and his uncle, the philosopher Paul Janet, encouraged him to also study science and medicine.
Abnormal behaviour and neurotic states resulted from a failure to integrate the 'tendencies' associated with a level and individuals may regress or be fixated at an earlier stage. Unfortunately, much of his work was not translated into English and Janet has not received the recognition he deserves.
His doctoral thesis investigated the topic of hallucinations and hypnotic phenomena. The findings of his first studies of Léonie, a hypnotic subject in her youth, attracted much attention when presented in 1885 and he successfully defended his thesis in 1889. Janet then took up a teaching position whilst also enrolling as a medical student and conducting research, mainly under the guidance of Charcot.
His research investigated hysteria and what are now termed anxiety states, phobias and obsessional disorders. He published two important books that introduced terms such as 'dissociation' and 'narrowing of the field of consciousness' which are used today, and his ideas influenced both Jung and Adler.
Sources: Gregory, R.L. (ed.), (1987) The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Pre ss; Sheehy, N.P., Chapman, A.J. and Conroy, W.A. (eds) (1997) Biographical Dictionary of Psychology, London,Routledge.
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