HYPNOTISME, SUGGESTION, PSYCHOTHEROPIE. Études Nouvelles par le _Dr.
Bernheim_, Professeur à la Faculté de médécine de Nancy. Paris: 1891.
Octave Doin, pp. 518.
The literature of the new science of Hypnotism continues to increase with
unabated pace; most of the contributions consist of studies of a few
cases or a brief exposition of a single point, in most cases of points
relative to the application of hypnotism to disease. The present volume,
however, is of special importance not alone because of the authority that
Dr. Bernheim’s name brings with it,—but because of the comprehensiveness
and the skill and interest of the exposition. It is supplementary to Dr.
Bernheim’s former volume, “Suggestive Psychotherapeutics,” (1886-87,
English translation, 1889) and reflects the progress that has resulted
from continued and systematic observation. The therapeutic interest in
it naturally finds most complete representation and about half the volume
is devoted to the description of cases cured or benefited by suggestive
treatment. Although nervous complaints predominate in these well arranged
and well described cases, yet the method is shown applicable to all the
ills that flesh is heir to. While this portion of the volume will be of
greatest interest to the medical world, the psychologist will find most
food for reflection in the first and more theoretical half of the book.
He will find there an interesting historical sketch illustrating how
processes similar to those now studied as hypnotism have been in use from
ancient times; how all the various healers, and the various processes
and agencies used by them, involve different modes of application of the
one principle of suggestion. “It is the human imagination that works
miracles.”
Suggestion is defined as the act by which an idea is introduced in
the brain and accepted by it, and thus many of the means by which one
person influences another under every day, normal circumstances would be
included in the term. Hypnotism is simply one of the most important and
efficient methods of producing a state of increased suggestibility. In
every day life we have abundant evidence of the tendency of ideas to be
realised in actions; with every change in thought and emotion there is
associated some motor expression, too subtle perhaps for analysis and
description, but still present and significant. Under excitement and
nervous strain these motor accompaniments of thought are increased and
serve as the basis of the muscle reader’s skill. Again the possibility
of disbelief and of recognising the illusory character of a sensation
involve the control of higher directing powers; the accumulated
experience of the past passes sentence upon the new candidate. If we
imagine a condition in which this form of control is abolished, we should
have a subject accepting as real almost any idea or sensation that is
suggested to him, and expressing freely and unreservedly his acceptance
of the same. And this it is that hypnotism does. It builds upon the
natural credulity which it is the difficult task of reason to shape and
control, and brings into prominence the automatic, subconscious phases
of mental action. It does not endow subjects with new faculties or
deprive them of their individuality, but shows in a strangely perverted
perspective the various faculties and processes that go to build the
endlessly complex elements of a personality. This “suggestion” view of
hypnotism is the contribution of the Nancy School, and is fast becoming
the recognised view of science; one will nowhere find a clearer and more
convincing exposition of it than in Dr. Bernheim’s pages.
It is clearly impossible to summarise the various details that make
up the body of the volume; but all the important topics are discussed
and result in conclusions unusually free as well from vagueness as
from narrowness. The processes inducing the state, the proportion of
susceptible individuals, the various kinds and stages of hypnotism,
its relation to sleep and other normal states, the rôle of memory in
hypnotism, the interesting post-hypnotic, negative and retroactive
hallucinations, its relation to hysteria, its possible use in
crime,—these are some of the chief topics treated. The volume is a
valuable contribution to the literature of the subject, reflects its most
recent acquisitions, and would well merit a presentation in an English
translation.