Psychological Automatism

Preface to the third edition

This new edition reproduces the work exactly as it was published in 1889, without modifications. Undoubtedly, new studies have since completed and, on certain points, modified the opinions I expressed ten years ago. However, these new investigations are summarized in other works to which I ask the reader's permission to refer. The research conducted at the psychology laboratory of the Salpêtrière A famous teaching hospital in Paris where Janet and Charcot studied hysteria and the mind. has just been published in two volumes under the title Neuroses and Fixed Ideas. They present many observations and experiments regarding disorders of the will will: the faculty of conscious choice and action, attention, and memory, as well as obsessive ideas original: "idées obsédantes" and their treatment. One may consider these studies as verifications and supplements to the doctrines that were set forth in Psychological Automatism.

Paris, November 15, 1898.

Neuroses and Fixed Ideas, psychology laboratory, Salpêtrière, disorders of the will, attention, memory, obsessive ideas, Psychological Automatism