Pierre Janet was a Fucking Rock Star

You probably have never heard of a dude named Pierre Janet. He was a French philosopher and psychologist who lectured at the Sorbonne and created the first model of treating trauma in the 1800s. He was also created the terms “subconscious” and “disassociation.”

The idea that our brains work at more than one level, and process and give feedback at all of these levels was not anything anyone had considered before. And what later became known as “hysteria” was what he rightly termed disassociation…the idea that the brain is going to protect itself from trauma and perceived trauma. It wasn’t crazy, it was adaptive.

The people in psychology you have heard of credit this dude for their work.

This dude. Rock star. Really.

Freud and Adler both built their theories on Janet’s work. Jung studied with him outright then did the same. Janet was a straight-up brilliant bad ass. He wrote a ton of epic stuff, but his best known work is likely Psychological Healing, published in 1919.

Janet’s work informed the seminal work of current trauma treatment movement, Judith Hermann’s Trauma and Recovery, which was considered groundbreaking in 1992. Lisa Najavit’s Seeking Safety treatment protocol honors this book specifically. All other sequential trauma treatment modalities come from Herman, as well, whether credited or no.

And it all comes from Janet. Fucking ALL of it. Before we understood what was going on with the brain in a scientific way. Before even Freud asked what was up with yo’ mama. It was all Janet.
So many of his ideas are bearing out as truth as we use new technology to learn more about how the brain works. Other than the specific ideas of subconscious and disassociation, Janet was the first to posit that:

• The mind and body are a unified entity. You can’t separate their functions and expect to help people achieve wellness.
• We can better understand how all of these issues manifest differently in different people if we have some sort of classification system to help us respond better to their needs. If we understand the problem we are better helpers.
• Our minds have a tendency to wire themselves in such a way as to reproduce our past experiences and fixate on them as how the world works. We create fixed ideas about how the world works.
• When our subconscious is triggered, and painful memories trigger our feedback loop, our ability to use our conscious mind to make decisions for us becomes more and more difficult. This puts us in a state of “psychological misery.”
• When we learn a level of self-awareness, it allows us to better perceive the reality of the present, handle issues accordingly, and lessen our use of psychic energy. That is, when we can experience the reality of the present, rather than see it through the eyes of our trauma it doesn’t exhaust our system. And we have way less psychological misery.
• If we help people become more grounded and present focused by assigning life tasks that are creative and engaging in nature (art, music, etc.) while finding ways to lessen the stress they experience, they learn to stay grounded in the present moment.
  

Why don’t we learn about Janet? Because as a teacher, he didn’t believe in creating his own school of thought. There is no Janetian studies, like there is Freudian studies or Jungian studies. His focus was on curating reflexive practitioners who thought for themselves. So there was no Janet movement. Forty five years ago, this loss was lamented thus: “Janet's work can be compared to a vast city buried beneath ashes, like Pompeii. ... It may remain buried forever. It may remain concealed while being plundered by marauders. But it may also perhaps be unearthed some day and brought back to life" (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 409).

Many of his books haven’t been reprinted in recent years. At least one has not been translated into English at all. Imagine all we are missing about his work.

Maybe it’s time to bring back Janet, whatcha think?

No, not this one. The French guy.