Janet and Freud: revealing the roots of dy narn ic psychiatry

scholarly revival and, in the process, his contribution to dynamic psychiatry is increasingly being recognised. This article compares and contrasts Pierre Janet’s early studies on hysteria and the neuroses with those of Freud. Method: The study surveys original works by Janet and Freud and contempo-rary scholarly exegeses. It particularly focuses on ideation and memory, con-sciousness and dissociation, psychological trauma, the self, therapeutic influence, and treatment by integration versus abreaction. Results: Grounds are presented for either preferring Janet’s notions to Freud’s, or for integrating them. Conclusion: It is concluded that a number of Janet’s contributions to psy-chopathology and psychotherapy, particularly in the field of dissociative dis-orders, deserve further exploration and application. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 1996; 30:480-491 Dynamic psychiatry was conceived at the Salp&tri&-e just over 100 years ago. First Janet [l] and then Breuer and Freud [2] published studies on the dynamics of hysteria. For the following half a century Freud’s influence on psychiatry eclipsed that of Janet. Two publications spanning the last 25 years reflect a reversal of that process: Ellenberger’s chapter on Janet in his The Discovery of the Unconscious [ 3] and Van der Kolk and Van der Hart’s Pierre Janet and the Breakdown of Adaptation in Psychologiccil Truuma [4]. What had been a slow trickle of re-publications and articles on Janet’s wor