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This paper explores George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil (1859) as an early portrayal of traumatic neurosis, providing a fresh perspective to enhance the existing scholarly attention on trauma in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. To illustrate potential contemporary diagnoses for Latimer, I examine other prevalent mid-nineteenth-century models of mental pathology, including phrenology, mesmerism, and hemispheric brain disunity. Drawing on Pierre Janet’s trauma theories from the late nineteenth century, I argue that Eliot presents an early portrayal of dissociative trauma through Latimer’s psychological experiences. Latimer’s visions, complex dream-like interactions, and involuntary consciousness splitting provide a framework for understanding dissociation in response to his emotionally traumatic loss of his mother. Eliot’s exploration of dissociation anticipates Pierre Janet’s theories, which underpin contemporary understandings of trauma, revealing a remarkable modernity in Eliot’s approach.

This article discusses the relationships between sociology and psychology through the dialogue between Georges Dumas and Marcel Mauss about the expression of emotions during the 1920s. Firstly, the aim is to show the affinities of their engagements concerning the disputes between human sciences and philosophy. Secondly, from an analysis of their trajectories, the aim is to show that the positions taken in the debates are associated with the positions psychologists and sociologists took inside the academic field from 1900 to 1930. Finally, the article aims to show that the dialogue between Mauss and Dumas reveals a process of sociologization of psychology rather than a psychologization of sociology, which has produced criticism from psychologists aiming to regain their lost position and from sociologists from the new generation aiming to overcome Durkheimian sociology.

Janet’s conceptions of the subconscious are restrictively conceived but show important differentiations which are discussed in detail. First, an outline of Janet’s conception of consciousness is presented as well as of the terms of psychic synthesis and the notion of the field of consciousness. This is defined as a system of elementary or relatively elementary psychic phenomena which are connected with the personal ego in a given moment. Herbart’s conception of the relation of conscious and unconscious psychic phenomena is analysed. Concerning Janet’s psychology of tendencies, several kinds of subconsciousness are distinguished: dissociative subconsciousness, habit formation, adaptation, psychological automatism, dispositional subconsciousness and threshold-related subconsciousness or subliminal consciousness. The problem of dissociative subconsciousness caused by fixed ideas is discussed, and adaptation, habitualization and psychic automatism are described, all notions which are important for the conception of dissociative subconsciousness. Janet’s understanding of double personality is outlined. Finally, the problem of the threshold of consciousness is explained.

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), the leading neurologist of his time, is best remembered for his studies on hysteria presented in clinical lectures at the Paris Salpêtrière hospital. Developing the concept of traumatic male hysteria after accidents in which patients suffered slight physical damage led him to advance a psychological explanation for hysteria. Traumatic hysteria is the context for a close reading of Charcot's \"last words\" based upon a final unpublished lesson in 1893. This case history concerns a seventeen-year-old Parisian artisan whose various signs of hysteria developed following a dream in which he imagined himself the victim of a violent assault. Charcot identifies the dream/nightmare as the \"original\" feature determining traumatic hysteria. The dream sets in motion an overwhelming consciousness followed by a susceptibility to \"autosuggestion\" producing somatic signs of hysteria. Charcot's final lesson on dreams thus culminates his study of the psychological basis of traumatic hysteria.

The reciprocal relationship between cultural trauma studies and psychoanalytic discourse on the one hand, and trauma studies and fictional representations of trauma on the other, has been commented on by scholars within the field of literary studies. What connects the representation of trauma in cultural trauma theory, trauma fiction, and psychoanalysis is that it is regarded as something that overwhelms an individual’s capacities for processing and functioning. However, while cultural trauma theory has come under scrutiny for prioritizing too narrow a view of trauma and its representations, the considerable critiques of and revisions to Freud’s theories, developed in the 1980/90s, have been mostly ignored by cultural trauma theorists. In this interdisciplinary article, we draw on relational psychoanalytic perspectives to demonstrate how relational revisions to psychoanalytic theory and techniques, as well as views on dissociation, can offer new perspectives for approaching literary works of fiction, such as the realist novel, which engage with the subject of trauma outside of established trauma conventions. We demonstrate that trauma novels by Lisa Appignanesi and Aminatta Forna parallel these revisions to psychoanalytic theory and techniques, allowing for a more pluralistic and nuanced representation of responses to trauma and suffering.

This review provided a comprehensive examination of various theories that attempt to explain hypnosis, focusing on the interplay between conscious and unconscious processes. We conducted a thorough analysis of key theories, from historical origins to recent models centered on cognition, social factors, and attributions. A central theme emerged: the critical role of the unconscious as a “gatekeeper” that modulates and guides the hypnotic experience. This notion appears in various forms across many theories, with the unconscious actively shaping and regulating the flow of information between conscious and unconscious realms during hypnosis. Understanding this dynamic interplay is crucial for comprehending the complex nature of hypnosis. The synthesized view of the unconscious as a “gatekeeper” offers a framework for integrating insights from diverse perspectives and highlights the centrality of unconscious processes in shaping hypnotic phenomena. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms of this unconscious “gatekeeper” role and its impact on hypnosis.

Received wisdom has it that psychologists and philosophers came to mistrust consciousness for largely behaviorist reasons. But by the time John Watson had published his behaviorist manifesto in 1913, a wider revolt against consciousness was already underway. I focus on William James, an earlier influential source of unease about consciousness. James's mistrust of consciousness grew out of his critique of perceptual elementarism in psychology. This is the view that most mental states are complex, and that psychology's goal is in some sense to analyze these states into their atomic \"elements.\" Just as we cannot (according to James) isolate any atomic, sensory elements in our occurrent mental states, so we cannot distinguish any elemental consciousness from any separate contents. His critique of elementarism depended on an argument against appeals in psychology to unconscious mentality—to unobservables. Perhaps this is ironic, but his thought is that pure consciousness is itself just as invisible to introspection as isolated, simple ideas.

Classic trauma theory has been criticized for ignoring the possibility of healing and growth for the traumatized, especially in a non-Western context. This reading of Ghassān Kanafānī’s Returning to Haifa tries to overcome such limitations by employing a framework that articulates Ibn Khaldūn’s thought on group feeling with Pierre Janet’s theory of trauma. Accordingly, the novel construes the Nakbah as a traumatic event that, despite its subjective meaning having long remained elusive, has never stopped affecting refugees’ consciousness. It then proposes that the Arab defeat of 1967 offered an opportunity for collective engagement and historical change to the Nakbah generation because it enabled them to reconcile their traumatic memories with their lives, inspiring their support for the Palestinian resistance. Such a parable of trauma integration counters the essentialist positions that Kanafānī attributed to some Zionist literature and points to the reversal of the schemes aimed at humiliating the Palestinians.

Psychological research has shown that empathy and compassion can be developed through mediation, simulation and embodiment techniques that foster benevolence and kindness, attributes and actions that play a major role in increasing subjective feelings of happiness and overall wellbeing. Our exercise of having students re-write the ending with a more positive outcome and re-draw the cover for the famous 19th century short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” serves as a model for future art education practices interested in promoting positive psychological experiences that can be used for enhanced self-care and empathy development.

This article describes Janet's concept of psychological trauma and the formation of rigid thought complexes (fixed ideas). This concept forms the basis for Janet's functional nosology of the neuroses, and is related to his dynamic psychology of conduct or action. It can be viewed as an early self-regulation model, because it contains a stratified bio-, socio-, and psycho-genetic hierarchy of behavioral \"tendencies\" that produce a more or less adaptive act by means of two hypothesized intervening variables: psychological force and psychological tension. Fixed ideas are viewed within this framework as an outcome of deficient processes of adaptation to psychological trauma. The article closes by pointing out affinities between Janet's psychological concept and modern cognitive and behavioral therapies.