Pierre Janet, a French physician and philosopher, was born in Paris on May 30, 1859; he died there on February 23, 1947. Janet spent his entire life in Paris, except for his years as a teacher and his travels abroad.

For fifty years (1889 to 1939) Janet was, along with Henri Bergson, the most famous French psychologist in the world, the student of two of the greatest minds in French psychopathology, Jean Martin Charcot and Théodule Ribot. Attempts were made to turn Janet into an unfortunate rival of Freud during the controversy over the discovery of hysteria.

Born into a middle-class Catholic family, he was deeply influenced by his uncle Paul Janet, a well-known spiritualist philosopher. As a philosopher and physician, Janet had the educational background of the ideal psychologist outlined by Ribot.

He entered theÉcole Normale Supérieure in 1879, received his degree in philosophy in 1882, and was appointed...