ABSTRACT
The French psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947) constructed a complex model of human conduct seen as a whole, where emotions play a central role. In this chapter, the author argues that Janet's holistic model can illuminate current issues in psychology. He first locates Janet's work, and highlights its proximity and differences with other Ganzheit approaches. The author then gives the main lines of his theory: first, the hierarchy of conduct and the principle of tension and, second, the question of the regulation of emotions, and their semiotic component. On this basis, the author will finally apply this model to a modern, everyday cultural experience—Lily goes to the cinema. As a French scientist, Janet started identifying subparts of human conduct. Yet his unifying project brought him to fix the conduct as unity of analysis for his psychological inquiry. The act of creative synthesis notion, developed by Wundt and redefined by his followers, plays a central role in Janet's theory.
