The major symptoms of hysteria : fifteen lectures given in the Medical School of Harvard University [between the fifteenth of October and the end of November, 1906] / by Pierre Janet.

  • Janet, Pierre, 1859-1947.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The major symptoms of hysteria : fifteen lectures given in the Medical School of Harvard University [between the fifteenth of October and the end of November, 1906] / by Pierre Janet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the state that appears as normal, two other character- istics appear, opposite, to all appearance: the return of consciousness of sensations and normal memory, and the entire forgetfulness of all that is connected with the somnambulism. Let us remember all these notions that here seem very simple, and we shall afterwards see them unfolded in every hysterical phenomenon. Ill The facts and the laws of somnambulism we have just described have been well known for a longtime, and usually they made up all that was studied about this curious state. But I believe that we must notice an- other interesting fact in order to understand better the whole of the monoideic somnambulism. This fact is usually more or less concealed, but it becomes very apparent and conspicuous in certain cases. Let us take up the case of that young girl, Irene,1 who acts during her somnambulism the scene of her mother's death with such apparent precision. Let us watch her during the intervals of her fits, during the period in which she seems to be normal; we shall soon notice that even at that time she is different from what she was before. Her relatives, when she was conveyed to the hospital, said to us: She has grown callous and insensible, she has soon forgotten her mother's death, and does not seem to remember her illness. That remark seems amazing; it is, however, true that this 1 Cf. L'amne'sie et la dissociation des souvenirs par l'emotion, Journal de psychologie normale el pathologique, 1904, p. 417.