Skip to main content
Full access
Images in Psychiatry
Published Online: 1 April 2010

Jean Martin Charcot, 1825–1893: Did He Anticipate Freud's First Topology?

Perhaps Freud's most significant contributions to psychology were his arguments concerning the importance of the unconscious mind in understanding conscious thought and behavior (1). In his first topology of the mind, he proposed that the preconscious was a layer between conscious and unconscious thoughts and that a key factor in the operation of the unconscious was "repression" (2). However, as Ellenberger pointed out, the discovery of the unconscious was shared with others, including the French psychiatrist Janet, as the idea arose in different places at about the same time (1).
The recent discovery of a drawing of the mind sheds a new light on Charcot's contribution to the discovery of the unconscious. This particular drawing was found by one of us (C.B.) in Charcot's personal notes related to a lesson he gave on June 28, 1892, and kept in the Salpêtrière historical collection of the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris (collection reference: MA VIII 12, p. 2). Charcot's first ideas on unconscious processes were conceived in the early 1880s, when he performed in-depth studies on hysteria, understood its possible traumatic origin, and focused, in his Salpêtrière lessons, on the force of the idea and experimental paralysis (3). About 10 years later, in 1892, the drawing was made at the time of 1) a substantial correspondence between Charcot and Janet on the case of Emma Dutemple, who suffered from hysterical amnesia, and 2) Charcot's lessons on personality disorders. In this lesson on June 28, Charcot explained that "the memories are on vacation in the unconscious where they are engraved; they do not get lost there.... It is as a latent ego but this ego is in a sense upper to the other one. It builds all which seemed lost."
In this scheme, the conscious ego (or "concrete ego," added Charcot) was the center of the mind. The unconscious stayed at the periphery of the conscious ego. As a consequence of a trauma or a nervous or affective shock, fixed ideas (idées fixes), designated "I" in the figure, were produced and located in the unconscious, which Charcot compared to a "second ego in formation." He drew from "I" a vector he called force de reviviscence that represented a force allowing recollection. The force located in the conscious ego was blocked by the fixed ideas. Is this vector the first description of Freud's repression, with its consequence of the return of repressed feelings or memories? This may be the case, as Charcot added that the unconscious, a second ego in formation, acted on the conscious ego. Under the drive of the fixed idea, the thoughts stayed at the outskirts, trapped in the unconscious, "the latent ego," unattainable, "repressed" (3). Charcot's death in 1893 prevented his ideas and speculations on unconscious processes from being shared at that time. In particular, the study of the Charcot-Freud correspondence shows that Freud did not receive a significant portion of Charcot's idea about the unconscious (3).

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Anne-Marie Vallin-Charcot, Veronique Leroux-Hugon, and Jean-Charles Pommerol.

References

1.
Ellenberger HF: The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic Books, 1970
2.
Freud S: L'interprétation des rêves (1899). Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2005
3.
Bouchara C, Mazet P, Cohen D: Charcot premier schéma de l'inconscient. Psychiatrie, Sciences Humaines, Neurosciences (in press)

Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Go to American Journal of Psychiatry
Go to American Journal of Psychiatry
American Journal of Psychiatry
Pages: 387
PubMed: 20360329

History

Accepted: December 2009
Published online: 1 April 2010
Published in print: April 2010

Authors

Details

Catherine Bouchara, M.D.
David Cohen, M.D., Ph.D.

Notes

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Bouchara, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, APHP, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), 47 Boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France; [email protected] (e-mail). Drawing published with the authorization of Pierre et Marie Curie University. Image accepted for publication December 2009.

Metrics & Citations

Metrics

Citations

Export Citations

If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.

For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.

Format
Citation style
Style
Copy to clipboard

View Options

View options

PDF/EPUB

View PDF/EPUB

Get Access

Login options

Already a subscriber? Access your subscription through your login credentials or your institution for full access to this article.

Personal login Institutional Login Open Athens login
Purchase Options

Purchase this article to access the full text.

PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry

PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry

Not a subscriber?

Subscribe Now / Learn More

PsychiatryOnline subscription options offer access to the DSM-5-TR® library, books, journals, CME, and patient resources. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development.

Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing [email protected] or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.).

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share article link

Share