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Fifty years have passed since Henri Ellenberger's still remarkably contemporary and relevant The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (Ellenberger, 1970). There, Ellenberger examined psychoanalysis, and dynamic psychiatry in general, as part of ‘a continuous chain’ linking exorcism, magnetism, hypnotism, and the different schools of dynamic psychiatry together. His argument that the ‘growth of psychoanalysis and of the newer dynamic systems was not so much a revolution as a gradual evolution from the first dynamic psychiatry to the newer ones’ (p. x) was an inspiration to virtually all historiographical work in psychiatry and psychoanalysis that succeeded it. Ellenberger's biographical study of Pierre Janet in the book (pp. 331-417) was also the first to be conducted in any language and, at 86 pages, this chapter almost constituted a monograph on its own. It is a testament to Ellenberger's analysis that it remains unsurpassed to this day; but it is also a testament that psychoanalysis has not learned much from his message that, 50 years later, Janet's work continues to be largely ignored by psychoanalysts.
Rediscovering Pierre Janet arrives partly to fill that gap. The editors gathered a fine collection of essays introducing the lay reader to the work and contemporary relevance of a profoundly important and unfortunately neglected figure. The collection explores some aspects of Janet's work in more depth than others, focusing on his theories of dissociation and trauma, as well as on its therapeutic implications. The book consists of 15 chapters, subdivided into three sections of four chapters each, plus an introduction of two chapters and an epilogue. The first section examines Janet's impact on psychoanalytic authors (Freud, Jung, object relations and Ferenczi-Bromberg). The second section explores his influence on contemporary trauma theory, while the final part explores his influence on current psychotherapy with a focus on