Automatism, Surrealism and the making of French psychopathology: the case of Pierre Janet

Bacopoulos-Viau, Alexandra

doi:10.1177/0957154x11428417

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(28 reference statements)

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“…It must be recalled that, as a tool for exploring the depths of the psyche, automatic writing occupied an initiatory place in Surrealism’s identity. But André Breton (1896–1966) had systematically failed to acknowledge publicly that he had read and reread Pierre Janet’s book L’Automatisme psychologique [22].…”

Section: Janet and Psychic Automatismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charcot, Janet, and French Models of Psychopathology

Walusinski¹,

Bogousslavsky

2020

Eur Neurol

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Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), thanks to his insight as a clinician can be said to be one of the precursors of scientific psychology. Charcot's 30 years of activity at La Salpêtrière hospital display an intellectual trajectory that decisively changed the idea of human psychology by favouring the emergence of two concepts: the subconscious and the unconscious. It was his collaboration with Pierre Janet (1859-1947), a philosopher turned physician, that led to this evolution, relying on the search for hysteria's aetiology, using hypnosis as a method of exploration. Focusing on clinical psychology that was experimental and observational, Janet built a theory of psychic automatism, "the involuntary exercise of memory and intelligence" leading to "independence of the faculties, freed from personal power." From all that came the idea of the subconscious, a functioning as a passive mental mechanism, resulting from a more or less temporary dissociation of previously associated mental content.

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Section: Janet and Psychic Automatismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charcot, Janet, and French Models of Psychopathology

Walusinski¹,

Bogousslavsky

2020

Eur Neurol

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“…Entre otros casos, Janet (1889) se basó en el de Lucie, una de sus pacientes histéricas que presentaba una segunda personalidad, Adrienne, con quien Janet lograba comunicarse mediante la escritura automática (Bacopoulos-Viau, 2012;Léblanc, 2001;Crabtree, 1993a;). Esta visión psicopatológica del desdoblamiento, muy extendida en el contexto francés, era contraria a la que defendió Myers en el contexto inglés.…”

Section: El Desdoblamiento De La Personalidad: Una Médium Bajo Terapiaunclassified

¿Dobles o espíritus? Las teorías del desdoblamiento frente al espiritismo en la España de principios del siglo XX

Graus¹

2014

Asclepio

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Cómo citar este artículo/Citation: Graus, Andrea (2014), "¿Dobles o espíritus? Las teorías del desdoblamiento frente al espiritismo en la España de principios del siglo XX", Asclepio 66 (1): p035, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2014.09 RESUMEN:El presente artículo aborda la relación entre las teorías del desdoblamiento y el espiritismo en España. Se exponen dos casos acontecidos a principios del siglo XX. El primero describe el desdoblamiento de la personalidad que el médico Víctor Melcior atribuyó a la médium Teresa Esquius. El segundo trata la polémica, entre el astrónomo Josep Comas y el espiritista Jacint Fornaguera, respecto al desdoblamiento corporal en la médium Carmen Domínguez. Se argumenta que esta clase de debates favorecieron el estudio científico de la mediumnidad. PALABRAS CLAVE:Desdoblamiento; Espiritismo; Mediumnidad; Metapsíquica; Doble Personalidad.ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the relation between dissociation theories and spiritism in Spain. It shows two cases that took place at the beginnings of the 20th Century. The first describes the mental dissociation that the physician Víctor Melcior attributed to the medium Teresa Esquius. The second shows the polemic, between the astronomer Josep Comas and the spiritist Jacint Fornaguera, in regard to the bodily dissociation in the medium Carmen Domínguez. It is argued that these kind of debates favoured the scientific study of mediumship.

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“…According to Bacopoulos-Viau (2012), Janet linked psychologic automatism to a very poor mental state of the human being, almost concomitant to a mental illness where humans had no control of themselves and their actions. In contrast of automatism, integration of consciousness meant mental health, rationality and the perfect state of humans able to control and conduct their actions with logic and rationality (Bacopoulos-Viau, 2012). This book and theory were supposedly the main influences for the writing of Les Champs magnétiques in 1919.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Contemporary Scientific Study of André Breton’s Automatic Writing

Bravo

2021

BRAC

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This paper proposes a new scientific way to study the concept and technique of automatic writing in Surrealism. Based on the specialists of André Breton’s work and the experts of automatism, we expose here the literary, psychiatric, neurological and parapsychological influences that Breton had to create his own concept and writing technique. We suggest here that we have to add to all these influences, the spiritist one, specifically, that of Allan Kardec, whose doctrine and concepts, such as psychography, were a direct impact to the surrealist automatic writing, even when Breton wanted to dissociate his movement from Kardec’s doctrine. Automatic writing has been studied from many angles, specially from literary and art theory and criticism, but also from history of science, philosophy, neurology, psychology and psychiatry and even from occultism, hermeticism and esoterism. Nevertheless, we don’t know any contemporary scientific experiment on this surrealist practice, maybe because materialist principles that support traditional Neurosciences are unable to study automatic writing. For this reason, we propose to study automatic writing, not from regular Neuroscience principles that we disapprove here, but from a post-materialist Neuroscience viewpoint, which agrees with the values that Surrealism defended

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Automatism, Surrealism and the making of French psychopathology: the case of Pierre Janet

Cited by 12 publications

References 34 publications

Charcot, Janet, and French Models of Psychopathology

Charcot, Janet, and French Models of Psychopathology

¿Dobles o espíritus? Las teorías del desdoblamiento frente al espiritismo en la España de principios del siglo XX

A Contemporary Scientific Study of André Breton’s Automatic Writing

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