14 Facts About Pierre Janet

Pierre Janet is ranked alongside William James and Wilhelm Wundt as one of the founding fathers of psychology.

Pierre Janet was the first to introduce the link between past experiences and present-day disturbances and was noted for his studies involving induced somnambulism.

Pierre Janet first published the results of his research in his philosophy thesis in 1889 and in his medical thesis, L'etat mental des hysteriques, in 1892.

Pierre Janet earned a medical doctorate the following year after completing a study on the mental state of hysterics.

In 1898, Pierre Janet was appointed lecturer in psychology at the Sorbonne.

Pierre Janet was a member of the Institut de France from 1913, and was a central figure in French psychology in the first half of the 20th century.

Pierre Janet was elected an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1932, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1938, and an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 1940.

Pierre Janet was one of the first people to allege a connection between events in a subject's past life and their present-day trauma, and coined the words "dissociation" and "subconscious".

The 20th century saw Pierre Janet developing a grand model of the mind in terms of levels of energy, efficiency and social competence, which he set out in publications including Obsessions and Psychasthenia and From Anguish to Ecstasy, among others.

Pierre Janet established a developmental model of the mind in terms of a hierarchy of nine "tendencies" of increasingly complex organisational levels.

Pierre Janet introduced the concept of idee fixe during his research and dialogues with patients.

Pierre Janet stated further that "we followed his example when we took the splitting of the mind and dissociation of the personality as the centre of our position", but he was careful to point out where "the difference lies between our view and Janet's".

However, in his report on psychoanalysis in 1913, Pierre Janet argued that many of the novel terms of psychoanalysis were only old concepts renamed, even down to the way in which his own "psychological analysis" preceded Freud's "psychoanalysis".

Pierre Janet received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in 1936.