ABSTRACT
At the peak of scientific interest in the disease known as hysteria in the late 1800s, Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud competed to find its cause. Independently they came to the same conclusion: psychological trauma was the culprit. The author explored Janet’s description of how memory traces of the trauma were set apart from ordinary consciousness; they lingered, intruding as terrifying perceptions and somatic experiences. Janet identified dissociation as the core pathology in hysteria, describing the condition’s five characteristic stigmata: anesthesia, amnesia, abulia, motor disturbance and modifications of both cognitive and emotional traits.
