scholarly journals Charcot, Janet, and French Models of Psychopathology

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-340
Author(s):  
Olivier Walusinski ◽  
Julien Bogousslavsky
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Psychic Automatism ◽  
Jean Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), thanks to his insight as a clinician can be said to be one of the precursors of scientific psychology. Charcot’s 30 years of activity at La Salpêtrière hospital display an intellectual trajectory that decisively changed the idea of human psychology by favouring the emergence of two concepts: the subconscious and the unconscious. It was his collaboration with Pierre Janet (1859–1947), a philosopher turned physician, that led to this evolution, relying on the search for hysteria’s aetiology, using hypnosis as a method of exploration. Focusing on clinical psychology that was experimental and observational, Janet built a theory of psychic automatism, “the involuntary exercise of memory and intelligence” leading to “independence of the faculties, freed from personal power.” From all that came the idea of the subconscious, a functioning as a passive mental mechanism, resulting from a more or less temporary dissociation of previously associated mental content.

THE ‘UNCONSCIOUS’ AND CATHOLICISM IN FRANCE

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
RUTH HARRIS
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Religious Imagination ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
Religious Iconography ◽  
Jean Martin Charcot

In nineteenth-century France, science and religion have often been portrayed as irredeemably opposed to one another. This article seeks to revise this interpretation by showing how these apparently dissonant views intermingled in the study of hysteria. Through a survey of attitudes towards Catholicism and in their treatment of Catholic patients, the article shows how French psychiatrists and neurologists were deeply indebted to religious iconography and experience, despite their vehement anti-clericalism. Because of their hatred of the church, they focused on the treatment of female hysterics who manifested ‘religious’ symptoms – demonopathy, mystical states, and stigmata – in order to amass conclusive evidence of Catholic ‘superstition’. Their preoccupation with such patients meant, however, that they paradoxically re-embedded Catholicism into their scientific practice by incorporating religious motifs, bodily poses, and iconography into their diagnosis of hysteria. At the same time, their disdain for the Catholic religious imagination meant that they refused to explore the fantasies of their subjects. For physicians like Jean-Martin Charcot and the more subtle Pierre Janet – a contemporary and competitor of Sigmund Freud – fantasies of bodily suffering, unearthly physical perfection, and an array of Catholic maternal fantasies associated with images of Mary and Christ were all nothing more than delusions, not the stuff from which an appreciation or understanding of the ‘unconscious’ could emerge. The result was that French physicians offered no psychodynamic transformation or symbolic reinterpretation of their words or physical symptoms, a resistance that was one reason among many for their hostility to psychoanalysis.

William James and Sigmund Freud: “The Future of Psychology Belongs to Your Work”

1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 465-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
William James ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Metaphysical Foundation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Historical Origins

Although James and Freud are generally not considered scientific by experimental psychologists, both wrote about their view of what a scientific psychology should look like. Their radically different philosophical epistemologies and historical origins are reviewed, to provide an understanding of their respective visions for psychology. James took his stand on a new metaphysical foundation for the way experiments should be conducted with his formulation of radical empiricism. Freud attempted a neurological explanation of the unconscious in his “Project for a Scientific Psychology.” Remarkably, their definitions of psychology as a science had a similar ring. Likely, this is because both took a phenomenological position with regard to how they defined science, which is also probably the primary reason their ideas on the subject have always been rejected by experimentalists. The humanistic implications of the neuroscience revolution, however, have caused a reassessment of their respective positions, as philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness have brought both Freud and James back into vogue, but in new and unexpected ways.

Soul Man Meets the Blind Watchmaker: C. G. Jung and Neo-Darwinism

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petteri Pietikainen
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Jungian Psychology ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Universal Structure ◽  
Blank Slate ◽  
The Mind

C. G. Jung's name has recently been connected with neo-Darwinian theories. One major reason for this connection is that Jungian psychology is based on the suggestion that there exists a universal structure of the mind that has its own evolutionary history. On this crucial point, Jungians and neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychologists agree. However, it will be argued in this paper that, although Jungian psychology opposes the tabula rasa doctrine (mind as a blank slate), Jung cannot be regarded as the founding father of evolutionary psychology. From the scientific perspective, Jung's biological assumptions are simply untenable and have been for many decades. In his attempt to fuse biology, spirit, and the unconscious, Jung ended in speculative flights of imagination that bear no resemblance to modern neo-Darwinian theories. The premise of the paper is that, when Jungian psychology is presented to us as a scientific psychology that has implications for the development of neo-Darwinian psychology, we should be on guard and examine the evidence.

The Primacy of an Independent Behaviour Therapy Community in the Evolution of Clinical Psychology

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Russo
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
Behaviour Therapy ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Scientist Practitioner Model ◽  
Insight Into

Lovibond (1993), weaves an exciting first person narrative of the development of behaviour therapy in Australia. His paper, derived from his years of experience and leadership, provides rare insight into the people and programs which have shaped behavioural practice today. In chronicling these early years, he well and fully elucidates the historic shortcomings of the larger field of Australian clinical psychology to provide minimal standards for science or practice, to effectively evaluate its practitioners, or to be a potent, united voice for the scientist/practitioner model. To remedy these shortcomings, he proposes the development of a new entity, largely independent of traditional clinical psychology or behaviour therapy, to simultaneously address issues of science, standards, and practice.In the remainder of this article I should like to address what I consider to be primary issues in the advancement of an experimentally based psychology applied to human problems; to frame the current issues within professional psychology in the US which are germane to Lovibond's notions; and to lobby strongly for the maintenance of a separate and independent behaviour therapy community as the basis for the practice of scientific psychology.

scholarly journals The Freudian Thing and the Ethics of Speech

Konturen ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mirror Stage ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
Definition Of

In his 1891 On Aphasia Freud defines the “thing” in the terms of J.S. Mill’s empiricist phenomenology as a set of sensory impressions that is linked both to language and to immediate sensory experience. These distinctions structure the Project for a Scientific Psychology and reappear in “The Unconscious,” where Freud writes that the unconscious is a scene of experience that is linked to, but continues to insist in excess of, language. While Lacan opposes das Ding to Freud’s definition, in “The Unconscious,” of the “unconscious Vorstellungen” as “the presentation of the thing alone,” this essay argues that Freud’s definition of the unconscious points to a scene of experience disorganized by language, that is censored by the passage through the mirror stage, and about which the Other knows nothing. The essay ends by looking at several texts by Tito Mukhopadhyay, who is autistic. Mukhopadhyay describes his autism in terms of a decision to not pass through the mirror stage, which left him exposed to a scene of experience disorganized by the desire carried on the Other’s voice. In his eventual decision to enter into language and write of his experience, Mukhopadhyay’s writings locate an ethics of speech that, rather than censor the unconscious presentation of the thing by linking it to a prohibited Oedipal object, makes a space within the discourse of the Other for a universal dimension of human experience.

scholarly journals Psychodynamic Mechanisms Of Capgras Phenomenon

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-116
Author(s):  
C.P. Korolenko ◽  
N.V. Dmitrieva ◽  
L.V. Levina
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Practice ◽  
Potential Possibility

The paper focuses on the psychodynamic mechanisms of Capgras phenomenon, a rare and insufficiently studied mental disorder, which has not been paid much attention to in clinical psychology and psychiatry up to the present. Despite the fact that the phenomenon was described in 1923 it has not been properly studied yet, though it is widely spread in psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice. The most important issue at present is to understand the underlying psychodynamic mechanisms, which can make psychotherapeutic work more effective. The paper contains several clinic cases, which can facilitate understanding of psychic peculiarities of patients suffering from the syndrome. Emphasis is put on the necessity to reveal the syndrome’s causes and the resources hidden in the unconscious as a potential possibility to overcome Capgras phenomenon.

Self-sacrifice for in-group's history: A diachronic perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babińska ◽  
Michal Bilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Emotional Events ◽  
Reciprocal Process ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.

Mind wandering as data augmentation: How mental travel supports abstraction

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myrthe Faber
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Data Augmentation ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Important Addition

Abstract Gilead et al. state that abstraction supports mental travel, and that mental travel critically relies on abstraction. I propose an important addition to this theoretical framework, namely that mental travel might also support abstraction. Specifically, I argue that spontaneous mental travel (mind wandering), much like data augmentation in machine learning, provides variability in mental content and context necessary for abstraction.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document