Chapter 3. History of Dissociation (2) From Hysteria to Dissociation (13)

Janet thought that this “automatism psychologique” is the most primitive form of mental activities in human mind. “Automatism” certainly has a nuance of automated and robotic activities, but as it accompanies consciousness and sensation according to Janet, the adjective “psychologiue” is added. Janet thought that this is equivalent to dissociation and found that among those who have this automatism they have one thing in common: the experience of psychological trauma.
Janet’s view of dissociation as automatism is similar to what his predescessors maintained, such as Moreau de Tour and Taine. However, they did not consider that automatism involved consciousness. Janet’s automatism did, and therefore it was not like a machinelike automatism, as was proposed by Despine (van der Hart, 1996).
Janet further classified automatism into total and partial. The former is exempflified in daydream-like state where the mind is totally occupied by automatism. To repeat Janet’s assertion, when a “vehement emotion” is experienced, the memory of the experience is separated from the consciousness and a traumatic memoery is formed. The basic concept of trauma theory is thus presented by Janet a century ago. However, Janet did not attempt to dig out the trauma memory, but instead, he aimed at integrating it.
The most characteristic feature of Janet’s concept of dissociation is its passive nature. Dissociation was explained as a result of the decline of what he calls the “tension psychologique” (psychological tension) that is attributed to one’s genetic predisposition. Unlike Janet, current dissociation theory tends to stresses more on the defensive nature of dissociation, in a way a little more “dynamic” than Janet himself. Freud’s discontent with Janet’s theory was exactly on this regard.