Suggestive therapeutics, a treatise on the nature and uses of hypnotism / Tr. from the 2d and rev. ed., by Christian A. Herter.

  • Bernheim, H. (Hippolyte), 1840-1919.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestive therapeutics, a treatise on the nature and uses of hypnotism / Tr. from the 2d and rev. ed., by Christian A. Herter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    attitude of the limbs known as catalepsy, the same automatic movements, the same illusions, the same active or passive hallu- cinations. Hallucinations are only suggested dreams; dreams are only spontaneous hallucinations. Whether spontaneous or sug- gested, these hallucinations remain passive ; that is, the subject is motionless as in the normal dream. They do not become active; that is, the subject does not move, does not walk, and only plays an animated part in the hallucination induced, when roused from his torpid condition by suggestion. In like manner the dreams of spontaneous sleep become active in some cases and constitute natural somnambulism. The fact will bear repeti- tion that all manifestations realized in the hypnotic condition may be realized in natural sleep in the same subject. No: hypnotic sleep is n:>t a pathological sleep. The hyp- notic condition is not a neurosis, analogous to hysteria. No doubt, manifestations of hysteria may be created in hypnotized subjects; a real hypnotic neurosis may be developed which will be repeated each time sleep is induced. But these manifesta- tions are not due to the hypnosis,—they are due to the opera- tor's suggestion, or sometimes to the auto-suggestion of a par- ticularly impressible subject whose imagination, impregnated with the ruling idea of magnetism, creates these functional dis- orders which can always be restrained by a quieting suggestion. The pretended physical phenomena of the hypnosis are only psychical phenomena. Catalepsy, transfer, contracture, etc., are the effects of suggestion. To prove that the very great majority of subjects are susceptible to suggestion is to eliminate the idea of a neurosis. At least it is not an admission that the neurosis is universal, that the word hysteria is a synonym for any nervous impressionability whatever. For, as we all have nervous tissues, and as it is a property of such tissues to be impressionable, we should all be hysterical. The sleep itself is the effect of a suggestion. I have said that no one could be hypnotized against his will. M. Ochorowitz has opposed this proposition energetically. Perhaps he has not quite grasped my idea. It is certain that any one who does not want to be hypnotized, and who knows that he need not be influenced if he does not wish to be, successfully resists every trial. It is also true that certain subjects cannot resist because their will- power is weakened by fear, or by the idea of a superior power which influences them in spite of themselves. No one can be hyp.