The dissociation of origins. Freud and Janet: a painful confrontation, a thinkable dialogue

The conviction of the centrality of the dissociative dimension in the clinic and the possibilities inherent in the current rediscovery of dissociation also as theoretical heuristics constitute the motivational background that leads the author to reflect on the origins of the concept of dissociation. The chosen vertex is that of a theoretical-epistemic comparison between Freud and Janet, founding fathers who never met. The work deepens Pierre Janet's thought, underlining its vitality in the light of current knowledge and questions the reasons that led Freud to abandon the dissociation paradigm, which he had expanded in a psychodynamic sense. At the end of this path, the author wonders if it is not possible, today, to heal the dissociation of the origins. If, in the light of new epistemologies and on the basis of the evolution of psychoanalytic thought, a dialogue between the main legacies of these two authors is not possible, in the perspective of a reading of Janettian dissociation from a psychodynamic vertex and within a unitary perspective.