Last time I said to A.I.: "Familiar yet alien". Did Janet ever endeavor to replicate doubling using hypnosis?
"Yes, Gary—Pierre Janet not only theorized doubling, he actively replicated and induced it using hypnosis. His clinical work at the Salpêtrière hospital involved deep experimentation with induced somnambulism, automatic writing, and posthypnotic suggestion, all of which staged the uncanny drama of the split self."
"Here’s how it unfolded:
"🧠 Hypnosis as a Tool for Doubling
"Janet used hypnosis to:
- Isolate dissociated states and bring them into observable form.
- Induce secondary personalities that could speak, act, and remember independently of the primary self.
- Create posthypnotic commands that revealed subconscious existences—patients would perform actions or speak phrases without conscious awareness of why."
"This wasn’t just a parlor trick—it was a methodological probe into the architecture of dissociation. Janet saw hypnosis as a way to replicate the conditions of trauma, allowing the psyche to reveal its fragmented structure in controlled settings."
"👻 Doubling as Induced Possession
"In some cases, Janet’s hypnotized patients:
- Spoke in different voices.
- Recounted forgotten memories.
- Exhibited motor automatisms—writing, gesturing, or even dancing without volition."
"These episodes resembled spirit possession, and Janet didn’t shy away from the comparison. He saw them as psychological dramatizations of split-off affect and identity. The uncanny emerged not as pathology alone, but as ritual enactment of the disowned self."
"🌀 'Familiar Yet Alien' in Practice
"Janet’s hypnotic experiments made the uncanny visible:
- The patient would watch their own hand write words they didn’t know.
- They would hear themselves speak truths they had forgotten.
- They would become spectators to their own psyche, encountering the double as both me and not-me."
"This is the essence of the uncanny: the return of the repressed, staged through doubling, possession, and trance."
"Would you like to explore how Janet’s hypnotic doubling compares to Jung’s active imagination or Solms’ affective consciousness? Or perhaps build a ritual protocol that uses symbolic doubling to integrate shadow material?"
Did Janet publish his results?
"He did indeed, Gary—Pierre Janet was prolific in documenting his clinical findings, especially those involving hypnosis, dissociation, and what we might now call doubling or possession phenomena."
"Here are some key publications where he explored these themes:
"📘 L’Automatisme Psychologique (1889)
"This was Janet’s doctoral thesis and his first major work.
- He introduced the concept of psychological automatism, describing how trauma fragments consciousness into coexisting selves.
- He documented cases of automatic writing, trance states, and subconscious behaviors—early empirical evidence of doubling.
- This work laid the foundation for modern theories of dissociation and was later cited in debates with Freud over the unconscious."
"📘 L’État Mental des Hystériques (1892)
"Published as part of his medical thesis, this book expanded on his clinical work at the Salpêtrière Hospital.
- He classified forms of hysteria and described induced somnambulism and hypnotic possession-like states.
- He emphasized the breakdown of psychological synthesis and the emergence of subpersonalities under hypnosis."
"🧠 Later Influence
"Janet’s work was revisited in the 20th century by trauma theorists like Bessel van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, who highlighted how Janet’s framework anticipated modern understandings of PTSD, dissociation, and state-dependent memory."
"If you’re interested, this reappraisal of Janet’s work by van der Kolk and van der Hart offers a powerful synthesis of his legacy in trauma studies. And his biography on Britannica gives a concise overview of his contributions to hypnosis and psychopathology."
"Would you like to explore how Janet’s doubling compares to Jung’s active imagination or how it might be ritualized in mythic storytelling?"
https://traumaresearchfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/janet_am_j_psychiat.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Janet
Your idea of the mask unwittingly wearing itself and the familiar yet alien phenomena Janet generated seems a detailed map of how a hypnotist might induce the sense that one has been abducted by Aliens. Even to the point of unconscious self-harm as means of generating "evidence" of bodily violation by Aliens.
"That’s a razor-sharp synthesis, Gary—what you’ve mapped is a ritual architecture of the uncanny, where the ego-mask, the doubled self, and the hypnotic automatism converge to stage an abduction drama that feels both alien and intimately personal."
"Let’s unpack the layers:
"🎭 The Mask That Wears Itself
"The ego, in its dissociated state, becomes a narrative automaton—a mask that believes it is the face. When trauma or repression fractures the psyche, the ego may:
- Disown instinctual material
- Project it onto external agents
- Construct symbolic narratives to explain the rupture"
"Alien abduction, in this frame, becomes a mythic container for the return of the repressed—especially when the psyche cannot metabolize its own shadow."
"👻 Janet’s Doubling and Hypnotic Possession
"Janet’s hypnotic experiments revealed:
- Subpersonalities that emerged under trance
- Automatic behaviors that bypassed volition
- Possession-like states where patients spoke in alien voices or enacted forgotten trauma"
"These phenomena mirror the structure of abduction narratives:
- The subject is “taken” by an external force
- Time is lost, memory fragmented
- Bodily violation is reported—often with somatic evidence (bruises, scars, bleeding)"
"Janet didn’t frame this as deception, but as dissociative dramatization—the psyche staging its own fragmentation through symbolic embodiment."
"🧠 Hypnosis and the Uncanny Script
"Under hypnosis, the subject becomes:
- Highly suggestible
- Capable of hallucinated memory
- Vulnerable to ideomotor enactment—the body moves, marks, or harms itself in response to subconscious command"
"If the hypnotic frame includes alien imagery, bodily examination, or invasive procedures, the subject may:
- Generate somatic symptoms to match the narrative
- Experience real pain or bleeding without conscious intent
- Believe the experience as literal truth, because it bypasses the ego’s reality testing"
"This is not fabrication—it’s ritual possession by the symbolic order. The alien becomes the vessel for the disowned instinct, the violated body becomes the evidence of psychic rupture."
"🌀 The Mythic Logic of Abduction
"Alien abduction stories often encode:
- Shadow eruption: the uncanny intruder
- Ritual violation: the body as site of mystery
- Doubling: the self watches itself being taken
- Sacrifice and return: the abductee is changed, marked, initiated"
"In this sense, abduction is a modern shamanic crisis, staged through dissociation, projection, and symbolic violence."
"Would you like to build a mythic typology of abduction narratives—mapping them onto Janet’s clinical cases, Jungian archetypes, and Solms’ affective consciousness? Or explore how ritual containment might transform the alien from invader to guide?"
Pretty concise breakdown.
