Pierre Janet was the first researcher into the problems of dissociative people. He introduced this research in the community of modern day psychology. He was recognized as one of the pioneers in the use of hypnosis as a clinical tool. The techniques that he developed are still broadly used today. He found that hypnosis was an accurate way to open up the hidden issues and the hidden world of gravely wounded and dysfunctional people.
The use of hypnosis as an intervention made it possible for others to use these techniques and methods and to substantiate many of the claims that he made in his writings. Janet’s findings about hypnosis remain true to this day. He found that hypnosis was a great tool to open up that which is hidden deep in the personality. The major limitation of hypnosis was and is that its use as a therapy of change is limited. The therapist can make suggestions to the person who is in a deep hypnotic state, and these suggestions will be acted upon after the individual comes out of hypnosis. However, the deepest and most troubling issues of the individual can only be altered for a few days to a few weeks. No long lasting change takes place in hypno-terapy. A few addictions do respond to hypnosis such as nicotine addiction.
Pierre Janet is recognized for his work in hypnosis. However, his findings through its use have largely condemned him into oblivion within the psychiatric community. He found that there were co-existing personalities, some of which the person was consciously aware and others that they were not aware of. These additional personalities had parallel memories in complete ignorance of one another. They exist; they function. They are often opposed to each other and to the conscious part of themselves. The conscious personalities are often engaged in socially acceptable behaviors and attempts to live within social standards that are lawful. Whereas, the hidden personalities are often antisocial and destructive to self and others and can be morally and behaviorally lawless, often in the extreme.
Janet named the condition of one person with many personalities Multiple Personality Disorder. This name emphasizes the fact that an individual, while existing in one body, has many personalities within.
He defined several terms that described what he was finding through hypno-therapy. Some of these are: hysteria, hypnosis, multiple personality, and spiritualism. Hysteria is a pathological (dysfunctional and destructive) form of dissociation that functions independently within the personality which disturbs the individual’s everyday life. Hypnosis is induced dissociation or amnesia whereby they are unaware of what is taking place while in the induced hypnotic state. Multiple Personality is a condition in which two or more dissociated states function with distinct differences of behavior, mood, and intention and are unaware of each other. Spiritualism was a voluntary acceptance of a supposed bodiless being (Janet’s words) which was external to the individual, that is, not part of the individual’s personality, but a separate entity functioning within the multiple’s personalities. This being that he identifies as a spirit being is real and active within and through the individual’s life. His clients described the activities of this being to him. The fact that he reported the spirit beings as the clients perceived them served notice to the psychiatric community that the malevolent spirit beings were active in psychiatric and social dysfunctions.
This, I believe, is the reason the psychiatric community ignored Janet’s work for about eighty years. His work with multiple personalities was not reported and, for years, was not mentioned in clinical training. By design, he was treated as if his great body of work did not exist.
Pierre Janet’s attitude in therapy was client centered. He was aware of but did not let the psychiatric community’s biased and determined opposition to anything spiritual interfere with the client’s therapy. Speaking to one of Kroepelen’s students, he declared, “I believe these people (the psychotics) until it is proven to me that what they say is untrue…. You see, these people are persecuted by something and you must investigate to get to the root.” These client revelations of pathological behaviors he described not in explicit terms but in words such as “obsessions”, “fantasies” and the like. He alluded to the client’s personal trauma but never stated it.
Janet’s work was spot on correct. It should be noted that he found a barrier of amnesia between the conscious part of the multiple and the sub-conscious. That, too, is true. Those of us who do therapy with the individuals who suffer from multiple personality disorder owe a great debt to this honest and clinically correct worker with those who suffer from MPD.
