Papers by Onno van der Hart
History of Psychiatry, Dec 1, 1996
Beer’s article on the origin and relationship between the neurotic/psychotic and functional/organ... more Beer’s article on the origin and relationship between the neurotic/psychotic and functional/organic dichotomies is well researched and comprehensively presented. We wish however to point to what we believe to be a significant omission: Jung is quoted on dissociation but not his principal source, Pierre Janet. Although Jung was a disciple of Freud, he ultimately preferred Janet’s dissociative approach. Beer quotes several articles by Jung underpinning the neurosis/psychosis dichotomy with the concept of dissociation. 1, Thus Jung contrasts the systematic, fluid, and potentially reversible dissociation (sic) in neurosis with that in psychosis. In the latter there is a disintegration of the psychic elements and the dissociation (sic) is physiological, unsystematic and potentially irreversible. The dissociative model reached its zenith by the first quarter of the twentieth century in the ceuvre of Janet. For fifty years it lay dormant until the appearance of Ellenberger’s chapter on Janet in his The Discovery of the Unconscious,’ and Hilgard’s elaboration of neo-dissociation theory linking his concepts of divided consciousness with Janet’s dissociation.’ These works contributed significantly to the renaissance of interest in Janet and dissociation. Beer’s article does not refer to Janet, but Jung himself does not neglect his forbear. In his Psychiatric Studies he extensively quotes Janet on dissociation.5, 6°’ Jung shows how in L’Automatisme psychologique8 ( 1889: 317-8, 457), Névroses et idges fixes9 (1898: 1, 144), and Les Obsessions et la psychasthénie,lO Janet links affect with
De Boeck Supérieur eBooks, Oct 12, 2021
De Boeck Supérieur eBooks, Oct 12, 2021
Psychosozial-Verlag eBooks, 2022
De Boeck Supérieur eBooks, Oct 12, 2021
European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation
In his commentary on my article, Trauma-related dissociation of the personality: An analysis of t... more In his commentary on my article, Trauma-related dissociation of the personality: An analysis of two conflicting models (Schimmenti, 2022); Van der Hart, 2021 ) challenged my position that dissociative subsystems of the personality include their own sense of self and first-person perspective for identifying trauma-related dissociative symptoms-which is a key-understanding in original views on dissociation and in the theory of structural dissociation of the personality. Relative to its severity, being traumatized involves an array of biopsychosocial symptoms and features. Each of these deserves scientific and clinical interest, and it is a sign of progress that they are receiving more attention. However, there is a tendency in the field to gather ever more of these phenomena under the umbrella of 'dissociation'. Lacking conceptual clarity and specificity, this development is fraught to scientific and clinical imprecision. Conceptual clarity as well clinical sensitivity may benefit from taking Pierre Janet's pioneering studies as points of departure.
Tosurvey the number and characteristics ofDID and DDNOS patients treated at a Regional Institute ... more Tosurvey the number and characteristics ofDID and DDNOS patients treated at a Regional Institute for Ambulatory Mental Health Care in the Netherlands, their treatment goals and treatment course, and the organizational investment, semi-structured interviews were held with therapists about all patients diagnosed with D1D or DDNOS during a three-month period (May 31, 1993 - August 31, 1993), and a study of these patients ' files took place. One hundred one patients received a dissociative disorder diagnosis, i.e., forty-one the diagnosis of DID and sixty the diagnosis of DDNOS. On average, these patients received the dissociative disorder diagnosis after a treatment period of over two years. Most therapists followed a basic stageoriented treatment model. In the majority of cases, hypnosis was an important adjunctive technique. For more than half of the patients (DID:53.7%; DDNOS:60.0%), therapists reported stabilization and symptom reduction as the treatment goal. For one-third (DI...
Ms. Y, a patient with MPD and an extended history of abuse, was about to undergo surgery for carp... more Ms. Y, a patient with MPD and an extended history of abuse, was about to undergo surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. She panicked when the attending personnel began preparing for the narcosis and were about to immobilize her; she became aggressive and began to fight with the nurses and the anesthesiologist. The latter, however, eventually succeeded in sedating her and inducing the narcosis, and the operation proceeded as planned. As a similar operation was scheduled for the near future, Ms. Y asked her psychotherapist to explore with her the background of her panic and aggressiveness in the operating room. While under hypnosis, she realized that the scene of the medical personnel, with masks over their faces and attempting to tie her down, had served as a trigger reactivating the traumatic memory of a rape that she had experienced at age 12 involving a number of masked boys. This traumatic memory became the focus of treatment. At Ms. Y's request, the therapist attended her both ...
Lack of assertiveness may be related to over susceptibility to suggestions. According to Janet, t... more Lack of assertiveness may be related to over susceptibility to suggestions. According to Janet, the essential characteristics of an effective suggestion are belief in both the suggested event and in the power of the suggestion. This article describes a hypnotic procedure, based upon cue-conditioning, that is intended to help clients learn to believe in their ability to counter undesired influences from other people. Although the term "sub assertiveness" has not been popular for very long, Janet pointed out as early as 1893 (Janet, 1893, 1909) that it can cover a multitude of problems. It referred to docile, obedient individuals who are inclined to think others are more intelligent or more experienced than they do, as well as to "weak" personalities who wish to avoid complicated conflicts and prefer to obey right away on points considered unimportant. No matter whether the problem is credulity or conflict avoidance, in both cases the individual accepts the view of...
European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 2021
1 Although it is possible that other than traumatizing events (such as hypnosis and mediumship) m... more 1 Although it is possible that other than traumatizing events (such as hypnosis and mediumship) may produce a temporary or longer-lasting dissociation of the personality, the exclusive focus here is on trauma-related dissociation.
QUADERNI DI PSICOTERAPIA COGNITIVA, 2019
Some World War I clinicians related the symptoms of traumatized servicemen to an underlying disso... more Some World War I clinicians related the symptoms of traumatized servicemen to an underlying dissociation of their personality, consisting of two prototypical conditions: one involving functioning in daily life (inspired by Myers, whose work is also discussed in this article, and which will be labeled apparently normal part of the personality [ANP]) and one involving fixation in the traumatic experience and related attempts at defense (emotional part of the personality [EP]). These authors described two dissociative patterns. As illustrated in this article, one pattern consisted in the presentation of a dominant ANP suffering from constant or frequent intrusions from EP. The other pattern consisted in repeated complete alternations between ANP and EP. Instead of the use of purely symptom-oriented approaches, for the dissociative symptoms to be really resolved, an integration of traumatic memory in the personality, that is, between EP and ANP had to take place. These clinicians used h...
Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis, 2018
This article was originally published in a special issue commemorating Giovanni Liotti in the Ita... more This article was originally published in a special issue commemorating Giovanni Liotti in the Italian Journal Cognitivismo Clinico and republished here with the kind permission of the Editor.
The American journal of psychiatry, 1989
In this reappraisal of the work of Pierre Janet at the centenary of the publication of L'auto... more In this reappraisal of the work of Pierre Janet at the centenary of the publication of L'automatisme psychologique, the authors review his investigations into the mental processes that transform traumatic experiences into psychopathology. Janet was the first to systematically study dissociation as the crucial psychological process with which the organism reacts to overwhelming experiences and show that traumatic memories may be expressed as sensory perceptions, affect states, and behavioral reenactments. Janet provided a broad framework that unifies into a larger perspective the various approaches to psychological functioning which have developed along independent lines in this century. Today his integrated approach may help clarify the interrelationships among such diverse topics as memory processes, state-dependent learning, dissociative reactions, and posttraumatic psychopathology.
Uploads
Papers by Onno van der Hart