JANET, PIERRE. - Physiologist and psychologist, nephew of Paul J., b. in Paris on 30 May 1859, d. there on 23 Feb. 1947. Director of the psychopathology laboratory at the Salpêtrière Hospital (1890), he later taught experimental psychology at the Sorbonne (1893), then experimental and comparative psychology at the Collège de France. He founded with G. Dumas the Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique (1904). From 1913 he was a member of the Académie des sciences morales.
J. set out to elaborate an experimental psychology constructed with rigorous scientific method. He concerned himself particularly with the study of pathological phenomena, attempting to discover the laws of psychological disintegration, which occurs in abnormal states. This would be a weakening of the subject's synthesizing activity, supplanted by the formation of subgroups of psychic phenomena, unconnected with one another; whence the illusion of a plurality of consciousnesses. Such mental disintegration does not affect the ontological unity of the subject.
Principal works: L'automatisme psychologique (Paris 1889); L'état mental des hystériques (ibid. 1894); Névros et idées fixes (ibid. 1898); De l'angoisse à l'extase (ibid. 1927-28).
Bibliography
Giacomo Soleri