The term ‘abaissement du niveau mental’—coined by Pierre Janet to designate a lowering of the energic tension that sustains conscious functioning—enters depth psychology principally through Jung’s systematic appropriation of it as a cornerstone concept for explaining the emergence of unconscious contents. Across the Jungian corpus the term operates on at least three distinct registers. First, it names a pathological vulnerability: the slackening of conscious tensity that opens the field to autonomous complexes, autonomous fantasies, and in extreme cases to the ‘loss of soul’ that primitive cultures address through shamanic retrieval. Second, it is invoked diagnostically to account for the conditions under which archetypal material—mythological imagery, visionary experience, creative fantasy—becomes available to consciousness, since reduced vigilance dissolves the check that directed attention places upon subliminal contents. Third, and paradoxically, it is recognized as susceptible to deliberate induction: yoga, dhyana, and certain analytic techniques deliberately court the abaissement for therapeutic or contemplative ends. Post-Jungian writers, including Quenk on typology and van der Hart on structural dissociation, extend the concept toward clinical trauma theory, linking it to the eruption of the inferior function and to peritraumatic drops in mental level. Janet’s own formulation—lucidly visible in ‘The Major Symptoms of Hysteria’—frames it as the defining vector of hysterical psychopathology. The concept thus bridges phenomenological psychiatry, analytic psychology, and contemporary trauma studies.
It is a sudden abaissement du niveau mental, a slackening of the conscious tension, to which primitive man is especially prone because his consciousness is still relatively weak
Jung identifies the abaissement as the psychic mechanism underlying ‘loss of soul,’ characterizing it as a sudden collapse of conscious tension that leaves the ego exposed to autonomous unconscious forces.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis
Subliminality corresponds to what Janet calls abaissement du niveau mental. It is a lowering of the energic tension, in which psychic contents sink below the threshold and lose the qualities they possess in their conscious state.
Jung equates Janet’s abaissement directly with subliminality, explaining how the drop in energic tension causes psychic contents to lose definiteness and rational coherence, producing dreamlike, analogical thinking.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis
Reduced intensity of consciousness and absence of concentration and attention, Janet’s abaissement du niveau mental, correspond pretty exactly to the primitive state of consciousness in which, we must suppose, myths were originally formed.
Jung argues that the abaissement replicates the diffuse consciousness of archaic humanity and thus constitutes the structural condition under which archetypal and mythological material surfaces.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
occasionally something similar can happen to civilized man, only he does not describe it as ‘loss of soul’ but as an ‘abaissement du niveau mental,’ Janet’s apt term for this phenomenon. It is a slackening of the tensity of consciousness
Jung explicitly translates the ethnopsychological notion of ‘loss of soul’ into Janet’s clinical vocabulary, demonstrating the term’s bridging function between primitive psychology and modern psychopathology.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
It is a mental depression characterized by the disappearance of the higher functions of the mind, with the preservation and often with an exaggeration of the lower functions; it is a lowering of the mental level.
Janet’s original formulation defines the lowering of mental level as the pathological core of hysteria, involving hierarchical dissolution of higher functions while lower ones persist or intensify.
, The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1907thesis
The primary precondition for eruption of the inferior function is a lowering of our general level of consciousness. Jung referred to this process as an abaissement du niveau mental
Quenk applies the abaissement to Jungian typology, identifying it as the essential precondition for the eruption of the inferior function under conditions of fatigue or stress.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002supporting
we may give the name of hysteria to a certain curve of mean depth which shows frequent oscillations between mental laziness and a more or less profound aboulia.
Janet characterizes hysteria as a pathological oscillation of mental level, establishing the dynamic, fluctuating nature of the abaissement rather than treating it as a fixed state.
, The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1907supporting
the term mental level indicates the ability to efficiently focus and use whatever mental energy is available in the moment. Mental efficiency includes the concept of integrative capacity.
Van der Hart’s structural dissociation theory reformulates Janet’s mental level as integrative capacity, arguing that trauma fixates survivors at low action-tendency levels equivalent to the abaissement.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentsupporting
Lowering of the level of consciousness denotes impaired quality of
Van der Hart distinguishes alterations of the level of consciousness—including lowering equivalent to the abaissement—from structural dissociation proper, clarifying their overlapping yet distinct clinical profiles.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentsupporting
immediately following the traumatizing event there is ‘a certain loss of consciousness. But this may vary from a very slight, momentary, almost imperceptible dizziness or ‘clouding’ to profound and lasting unconsciousness’
Van der Hart documents peritraumatic drops in consciousness in combat veterans and abuse survivors as empirical instantiations of the abaissement, linking Janet’s concept to clinical trauma phenomenology.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentsupporting
abaissement du niveau mental, 77, 235, 436, 446, 480
The index entry in ‘The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche’ documents the term’s pervasive deployment across multiple chapters of the volume, confirming its structural importance in Jung’s mature theoretical framework.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside
abaissement du niveau mental, 213
The index citation in ‘Two Essays on Analytical Psychology’ locates the term within Jung’s foundational statements on the personal unconscious, associative disturbance, and the conditions of neurosis.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953aside
abaissement du niveau mental, 385
Neumann’s index reference situates the abaissement within his developmental history of consciousness, associating it with regressive moments in the ego’s differentiation from the unconscious.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside
abaissement du niveau mental, 112n
The footnote reference in ‘The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature’ connects the abaissement to Jung’s analysis of Joyce’s dissociative style, implying that modernist aesthetics may exploit or mirror the lowered mental level.
, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1966aside