title: [Pierre Janet observes history].
abstract: Janet, philosopher and physician, Freud's junior by three years, not only described traumatic dissociation and pathogenic subconscious ideas; he outlined a comprehensive system of psychology. Still, he considered his concepts to be mere linguistic tools, designed to grasp mental phenomena as precisely as possible. His prime interest was in observations - his own and those of others, whether his contemporaries at home and abroad or predecessors of all kinds. Janet never regarded himself as a historian, but his works as well as his way of thinking are most interesting from a historiographical point of view. His three-volume Médications psychologiques of 1919 contains a wealth of material about the history of psychotherapy. Furthermore, he dealt with his sources in a critical and historically reflexive manner. The later Janet considered any explanation and theory to be "inventions", more or less useful and basically open to change. By working with the notion of "narration", he described scientific statements as narratives, different from lies, fairy-tales or novels only in their claim to be verifiable. Every narration, however, is placed in a social context: narrators always wish to evoke a particular image of the real in their audience. Thus Janet established the link between scientific edifices and individual motivation, an unsettling link in terms of the history of science and certainly alien, if not positively abhorrent to Freud.
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fischer-Homberger
mesh_terms: D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000266:history*; D005602:France; D005619:Freudian Theory; D006663:Historiography; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D010684:Philosophy / Q000266:history*; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history*; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000266:history*