THE CHARACTER OF THE HYPNOIDAL STATE
In “The Psychology of Suggestion,” I pointed out the conditions
of normal and abnormal suggestibility. Among these conditions,
monotony and the limitation of voluntary movements play an
important rôle. Any arrangement of external circumstances, tending
to produce monotony and limitation of voluntary movements, brings
about a subconscious state of suggestibility in which the patient’s
mental life can be influenced with ease.
I find that in the subconscious hypnoidal state consciousness
is vague and memory is diffused, so that experiences apparently
forgotten come in bits and scraps to the foreground of
consciousness. Emotional excitement is calmed, voluntary activity
is somewhat passive, and suggestions meet with little resistance.
The induced subconscious hypnoidal state is a rest state, a
state of physical and mental relaxation. It is a state of rest
and relaxation that is specially amenable to psychotherapeutic
influences. The important results obtained by me led to a closer
study of what I then thought was a peculiar mental state
designated by me as the _subwaking_, or the _hypnoidal_ state.
The subwaking, or the hypnoidal state is essentially an
intermediary state belonging apparently to the borderland of mental
life. On the one hand, the hypnoidal state touches on the waking
condition; on the other it merges into sleep and hypnosis. _A
close study of the hypnoidal state shows that it differs from the
hypnotic state proper and that it can by no means be identified
with light hypnosis._
In my years of work on patients and subjects, I have observed the
presence of the hypnoidal state before the development of hypnosis
and also before the onset of sleep. When again the hypnotic or
sleep state passes into waking, the hypnoidal state reappears.
The hypnoidal state then may be regarded as an intermediate and
transitional state.
A somewhat related state has been long known in psychological
literature as the hypnagogic state which precedes the oncome
of sleep and is rich in hallucinations known under the term of
_hypnagogic_ hallucinations. In coming out of sleep, a closely
related state may be observed, a state which I have termed
_hypnapagogic_. In both states, hypnagogic and hypnapagogic,
dream-hallucinations hold sway.
The hypnagogic and hypnapagogic states do not belong to light
hypnosis, as it can hardly be claimed that men fall into light
hypnosis twice, or possibly more than that, every day of their
life. We do not go into light hypnosis with every nap we take. We
do, however, go into the hypnoidal state when we pass into sleep or
come out of sleep. Every drowsy state has the hypnoidal state as
one of its constituents; every sleep state is preceded and followed
by the hypnoidal state.
Hypnosis may be regarded as belonging to the abnormal mental
states, while the hypnoidal state is more closely allied to waking
and sleep, and belongs to the normal, physiological, mental states.
At first, I regarded the hypnoidal state as peculiar, but as I
proceeded with my observations and experiments I could not help
coming to the conclusion that the hypnoidal state is found in all
the representatives of animal life and is as normal as waking and
sleep.
The hypnoidal state may be said to partake not only of the nature
of waking and sleep, but also to possess some characteristics of
hypnosis, namely, _suggestibility_. It is clear that, from the very
nature of its mixed symptomatology, the hypnoidal state is variable
and highly unstable. The hypnoidal state may be regarded in the
light of an equivalent of sleep. Like sleep, the hypnoidal state
has many levels of depth. It differs, however, from sleep in the
rapidity of oscillation from level to level.
In the experiments of various investigators, the depth of sleep
is found to be represented by a rapidly rising curve during
the first couple of hours, and by a gradually descending curve
during the rest of the hours of sleep. No such regularity of curve
can be found in the hypnoidal state. The depth of the hypnoidal
state changes very rapidly, and with it the passive condition and
suggestibility of the patient.
For many years investigations of the hypnoidal state were carried
out by me on subjects and patients, adults, and children. The work
was entirely limited to the study of such states as found in man.
Having found that during the hypnoidal state the condition of
suggestibility is quite pronounced for therapeutic purposes, and
having effected many cures of severe psychopathic maladies ranging
throughout the whole domain of hysterical affections, neurasthenia,
obsessions, drug habits, especially alcoholic ones, the hypnoidal
state has become, in my practice, quite an important therapeutic
agent. Other investigators have obtained some excellent results
with the hypnoidal state in their treatment of various functional,
psychopathic maladies.
Thus far, the work with the hypnoidal state has been confined
entirely to observations and experiments on human subjects
and patients, and also to the treatment of man’s psychopathic
ailments. I undertook a series of experiments on sleep, both
from a phylogenetic and ontogenetic standpoint, following up the
conditions and manifestations of sleep in the ascending scale of
animal life, from the frog and the guinea pig, through the cat, the
dog, to the infant and the adult.
My experiments clearly prove that the hypnoidal state is by no
means confined to man, but is also present in animals. This
is important since it indubitably shows how widely spread the
hypnoidal state is throughout the domain of animal life. Moreover,
the experiments clearly prove that the further down we descend in
the scale of animal organization, the more prominent, the more
essential, does the hypnoidal state become.
The conclusion is forced upon me that _the hypnoidal state is the
primitive rest-state out of which sleep has arisen in the later
stages of evolution. We may say that sleep and hypnosis take their
origin in the hypnoidal state_.[8] Sleep and hypnosis are highly
differentiated states; they have evolved out of the primitive,
undifferentiated, hypnoidal state which is essentially a subwaking
rest-state characteristic of early and lowly-organized animal life.
_The hypnoidal state is the primordial sleep state._
The development of the hypnoidal state into sleep has proven itself
useful in the struggle for existence of the higher animals; it
has, therefore, become fixed as the rest-state, characteristic of
the higher representatives of animal life. Hypnosis and other
trance-states, variations of the primitive hypnoidal rest-state,
have become eliminated as useless and possibly harmful to the
normal life adjustments of the higher animals and can only be
induced under artificial conditions in but a fraction of the human
race.
The hypnoidal state is the normal rest-state of the lower
vertebrates and invertebrates. The rest or sleep state of the lower
animals is a sort of passive waking state,--a subwaking state which
has survived in man as the hypnoidal state. Of course, the state
has been largely modified in man by the course of evolution, but
it can still be clearly detected, just as the tail of the simian
can be discerned in the human coccyx, or as the structure of the
prehensile hand of the quadrumana can be still clearly traced in
the foot of man. Waking, hypnoidal, and sleep-states may be termed
_normal_ states, while _hypnosis_ and various other trance-states
may be termed _sub-normal_ states.
The relation of the hypnoidal state to waking, sleep, hypnosis,
and other subconscious states may be represented by the diagram on
following page.
The hypnoidal state is normal, it is present in all representatives
of animal life.
Sleep, hypnosis, and trance-states are variations of the
fundamental hypnoidal state. The sleep-state has proven useful and
has become normal in the higher animals, while hypnosis like animal
“cataplexy” and the various forms of trance-states, likewise
variations of the fundamental hypnoidal state, characteristic
of man, have not proven of vital value, and have fallen below
the normal stream of consciousness with its concomitant adaptive
reactions.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM II]
The hypnoidal state is brief, variable, and unstable. They who
have observed the rest-states of the lower metazoa can form a
clear idea of the nature as well as of the biological significance
of the hypnoidal state in the life of the lower animals. The
animal is at rest for a brief period of time as long as it remains
undisturbed by external conditions of its environment, or by
internal conditions, such as hunger, sexual impulses, or other
internal disturbances. Soon the animal begins to move, sluggishly
at first, and then more quickly, and if there are no disturbing
stimulations, comes to rest, to be again disturbed from its
rest-equilibrium by the varying conditions of its environment.
The resting state is brief, irregular, differing from the waking
state in but slight relaxation, in comparatively slow reactions to
stimulations, and in a passive condition of the muscular system.
Respiration is regular, and diminished in rate. The heart beat is
slightly decreased, and general katabolic activity is somewhat
reduced.
The animal, however, is quite alive to what is going on. _The
animal rests, watching for danger._
Resting and active states alternate periodically, if possible, but
usually are irregular. The resting state is but a passive condition
in which the animal may be considered to hover between waking and
what we describe in the case of the higher animals as sleep. Sleep,
in its proper sense, does not exist among the lower representatives
of animal life.
This state of hovering between waking and sleeping, the
characteristic of the hypnoidal state, is no doubt of paramount
importance in the life-existence of the lower animals, considering
the numerous dangers to which they are continually exposed. The
animal must always be on the watch, either for food or for foe. It
can only rest or “sleep” with its eyes wide open. The hypnoidal
“sleep” can be best characterized as a _subwaking_, “twilight”
rest-state.
I demonstrated in my experiments that the animal, while in the
hypnoidal, subwaking rest-state, is apt to fall into a cataleptic
state, especially when the movements are suddenly and forcibly
inhibited. This cataleptic state, which reminds one of the hypnotic
state, may be observed in the lower animals, such as the frog,
the snake, the lobster, the bird, and, to a slighter degree, even
in the higher animals, such as the guinea pig, the cat, the dog,
especially in the young ones, such as the kitten, the puppy, and
the infant.
There is little doubt that the cataleptic state into which animals
fall during the hypnoidal rest-state is of some protective value
in their life. The animal “freezes,” “feigns death,” and is thus
either enabled to remain undetected by the animal on which it feeds
or, what is still more important, is enabled to remain unnoticed by
its enemy and thus escape certain death. The subwaking, hypnoidal
state may be regarded as the fundamental rest-state of lower
animals, and is characterized by a mixed symptomatology of waking,
sleep, and hypnosis.
The hypnoidal state is a powerful instrument in the tracing of
the past history of the growth and development of the symptoms of
psychopathic or neurotic cases; and practically is of far greater
value, inasmuch as the hypnoidal state has proven to be an easy
agency in effecting a cure, and bringing about beneficial results
in otherwise uncontrollable cases.
For the present, we can only say that the hypnoidal state is
found in man but in a rudimentary condition. It is a vestige of
man’s primitive, animal ancestors. The hypnoidal state is brief,
variable, forming the entrance and exit of repose,--the portals
of sleep. The primordial rest-state has shrunk to a transitory,
momentary stage in the alternation of waking and sleep. _The
subwaking, hypnoidal rest-state shrinks with the increase of
security of life._
FOOTNOTE:
[8] Prof. Ed. Claperèdé of Geneva University, Switzerland, and
Anastay seem to favor some similar view.