Janet's Obsessions and Psychasthenia: a synopsis

Abstract

Pierre Janet's Lés Obsessions et la Psychasthénie, Vol. 1 (1903) still stands as the most authoritative work on obsessional and related disorders yet written, but it remains unavailable to an English readership. This article presents an English synopsis of the French original. Janet considers the central problem to be a special mental state which he terms psychasthenia, entailing low psychological tension and an impotence of adaptation to reality. Especially affected are the reality functions of attention, volition, and present-related emotion. Their failure leads through diversion of mental energy to the forced agitations, i.e., mental manias, ruminations, tics, phobias, and anxiety. Obsessions are a late and variable development, when present they symbolize the underlying mental state of incompleteness. The full significance of Janet's contribution may have yet to be established by developments in the neurosciences.