My Janet. A story
of investigation
Natalia FEDUNINA
Reprinted from : FEDUNINA, N.
(2006). My Janet. A story of investigation. Janetian Studies,
Actes des conf. du
27 mai 2006, No Spécial 01, pp. 7-8.
He threw
a thought into the air
It fell
on earth, I knew not where.
For so
swiftly it flew, the sight
Couldn’t
follow it in its flight
Nearly Longfellow
I know, this title doesn’t
look like a title for a serious study or talk. And frankly speaking, I’m not
going to deliver such a speech. Rather I’m going to share with you both my
excitement and my failures concerning Pierre Janet, his theory and
psychotherapeutic practice, as well as my nowadays aims of research.
Basically I was very much attracted and inspired by
the combination of philosophy and medicine, by the possibility of combining
clinical practice and general academic grasp, reflection on one’s experience.
And actually this factor determined my choice of exploration and application of
Janet’s theory.
I really was charmed by his books, both their contents
and the way they were written, the very style of presenting the material. But
you know, it’s not enough just to be charmed, well, at
least in science. My first major aim was to make Janet known for my colleagues,
both academic researchers and therapists. And to achieve it I wrote a
dissertation, thesis on Janet, and several articles. But unfortunately that was
far from being enough. The fate of dissertations is quite known. Millions of
PhD dissertations are written annually in
But as the memory, according to Janet, has to do both
with the past and with the present, the same with the “artifacts” of the past. We admire Shakespeare, Pushkin, Goethe, we consider
Notre Dame as one of the most marvelous creations – they are not just history,
the past, they are the present. And I thought that Janetian system is also an
art, which should be admired as it can change smth in us, as it can make us
understand ourselves better. Art of both therapeutic practice
and thinking about it. What makes us return to the past? In poetry –
that’s the art of the word, in architecture – the art of building, giving voice
and beauty to stone or wood. In science that’s probably the art of thought, way
of thinking, some paths of thought that may be new or forgotten or just never
before taken. These are the ways of thinking about the universe, about the
atom, about a human being, about grief and joy, about consolation. And I wanted
the most to show these paths and to follow them, to try to walk in the shoes of
Janet, to follow his thought. And I tried. And I failed.
My first failure was connected with Janet’s concept of
present as a form of memory. The presence is probably the place of fusion of
two genius books on personality and memory. I was absolutely charmed by it, and
decided to operationalize it and to add an empirical, an experimental part to
my purely theoretical paper. I wanted to explore the conditions and the
consequences as well as the very process of present. Probably not to measure
it’s duration, but to find out smth about the type of presence which the
present implies, about the way of experiencing it, personal attitudes connected
to the present, the way it influences the way of being. I’ve found a lot of
interesting facts about it. For example, in Russian one word “nastoyaschii” is
used for both “present” and “real”. To accomplish this goal I needed to go
several floors downstairs from a philosophic, partially clinically proved
notion to an experiment-ready concept. At that time, 4-5 years ago I couldn’t
come up with a decent experimental plan. I couldn’t think of experimental
material, of the ways to stimulate and preserve this state. And I also had
little understanding of what to measure and how. How is it possible to measure
an intense sense “I’m alive”, this peak personal experience? Will it change the
way of memorization the things? How? Or shall we search for consequences is
some other realms? It is very vividly seen in psychotherapy, in clinical
practice. But what about the possibilities of disclosure in
experimental psychology? Well, probably if I get some grant for this
research, I’ll continue it one day. That’s really a breath-taking topic.
My second failure is much more recent. I really very
much admire Onno van der Hart’s and his colleagues
book on structural dissociation. Janetian psychotherapy was so logically taken
as a basis, as a ground, which gives shape to the way of thinking about
psychotherapy of trauma. Right now I’m working in the realm of psycho-oncology
(the ongoing trauma), and my therapeutic basis is in humanistic psychotherapy,
which is quite different from Janetian. So know, thinking about my own possible
style or even system of psychotherapy, I’m thinking of the ways of integration,
of application (actually, right know in the beginning of my psychotherapeutic
work, application of any theory or even skill is a difficult process for my).
And I decided that what I need most of all now is to get deep understanding of
Janetian psychotherapy, its evolution.
Of course I would like to write a book on Janet, on
his psychology and psychotherapy. But insights in his system of psychotherapy,
on the basis of which he managed to develop a general psychological theory of
psyche, - that’s the realm in my nowadays investigations in this realm.
