Hypnotism made plain

Modern methods of inducing complete hypnosis, or the suggestive semi-trance, vary with the temperament and training (theoretical convictions) of the hypnotist. Some employ the method of Braid, others of Liébault, or, again, a combination of the two.

In certain cases, the ancient method of employing passes, at a slight distance from the body, is used, especially when a deep hypnotic trance is deemed desirable. The regular, monotonous stroking motions have a potent tranquilizing effect, and aid also in concentrating the patient’s attention. This was the method of Puységur, who sought to induce the gentle sleep rather inaptly called by him “somnambulism.”

The Abbé Faria depended mostly upon emphatic pronouncing of the word “sleep,” after the subject had been comfortably ensconced in an easy chair. In obdurate cases he laid his hands upon the crown of the head, on both brows, or elsewhere, as the occasion seemed to demand.

Disciples of Braid seek, before all else, to obtain results through mental concentration and attention, holding a glittering object above the level of the eyebrows, at a distance of a foot or more from the subject’s eyes. The effort of the eyes to gaze fixedly at the brilliant object, accompanied by banishment of all thoughts apart from the object, usually induces the hypnotic state.

Not a few modern psycho-therapists employ Liébault’s method to induce hypnosis, though certain modifications of his practice are often introduced. The patient is usually placed in a comfortable chair and requested to “think of nothing,” gazing meanwhile into the face, or at the raised finger, of the operator. The patient is then told in a soothing voice that his eyelids are heavy, that his limbs feel numb: “You are getting more and more drowsy. You are falling asleep,” etc. If this procedure is followed for a minute or two, the desired degree of “somnambulism” is usually induced.

Patients vary considerably in their susceptibility to suggestion. Freedom from fear and nervousness are prerequisites to satisfactory results. This may be effected by frank and friendly preparatory talk, the operator’s aim being to create a sympathetic atmosphere, while at the same time conveying the impression that he has complete command of the situation, and is fully able to give the help sought by the subject. This is the procedure employed by Dr. A. M. Hutchison, the very successful English psycho-therapist.

There is a tendency on the part of nervous patients to contract the muscles, clench the jaw, assuming unconsciously an attitude of rigidity. Just the opposite condition, says Hutchison, is required. There must first be complete relaxation of all the muscles, as well as of the mind. This may be accomplished by allowing the mind to dwell upon pleasant memories or lovely scenes, followed by an effort to make the mind as near a blank as possible. Gazing steadfastly at the upraised finger of the operator is conducive to this condition. The fixed gaze serves only as a preliminary to complete auto-suggestion, without which a deeper condition of hypnosis cannot be produced. The operator in the last analysis merely aids the subject in hypnotizing himself, the hypnosis being merely a means to an end, which is the reception of suggestions by the subconscious mind, suitable to the disease, or bad habit, for which treatment is sought.

As said previously, it is now well established that the mind is dual in character, one part being conscious and the other subconscious. Under hypnosis the conscious mind is for the time being distracted, or in a state of abeyance. In this condition the subconscious mind is open to suggestions from the operator. The suggestions being intended for the welfare of the subject, they are passively received, retained, and automatically acted upon by the individual, unconsciously.

In cases where the patient is the victim of a bad habit, the operator merely needs to suggest to the subconscious mind that the habit is extremely detrimental to the health or worldly success of the patient, and must be got rid of. The suggestions act directly upon the subconscious mind, and when later the patient is tempted to continue the objectionable habit, there comes into play a restraining impulse—an inhibition from the subconscious part of the mind. In some cases repulsion takes the place of the former desire.

Mental suggestion is successfully employed not only in the eradication of bad habits, but also in the treatment of many diseases, among which may be mentioned certain forms of insomnia, constipation, obsessions, early melancholia, paralysis, St. Vitus’ dance. It is also effective in such cases as stammering, writer’s cramp, stage-fright, and as a substitute for gas in dentistry, or for chloroform, etc., in some other instances where an anaesthetic would ordinarily be employed.

Professor Wetterstrand is speaking from long experience when he declares that “the palliative effect of suggestion as a soporific and anodyne remedy in serious and incurable diseases, such as tuberculosis, cancer, etc., is far too little appreciated.” The great value of suggestion in every day medical practice as “an aperient, an appetizer, a soporific, and a means of regulating the digestion, the secretions and the menstrual discharge” was pointed out by Professor Forel, and, as he remarked, “is far too little realized.” The method has proved of great value in the treatment of alcoholism, addiction to morphia, neuralgia and hysteria.

Some persons are not hypnotizable. Just what the percentage is who are obdurate to hypnosis is not definitely known. Much depends on the skill and personality of the operator. Experienced psycho-therapists have stated that only about one person in every ten reaches the state of deep sleep. On the other hand, Dr. Liébault, who hypnotized a great number of persons of all ages and occupations, and of both sexes, found that of 1,000 persons subjected by him to hypnotic experiments, 460 fell into a deep trance, 223 into a very deep trance, 129 into a deep hypnosis, 30 into a light hypnosis, 100 into a light trance, and 26 remained refractory. As a rule only a certain degree of drowsiness is required for successful medical treatment.

Generally speaking, no one can be hypnotized against his will. And it should be noted particularly here that no one can ever be made to do anything under hypnosis that would be against his nature or his moral convictions when he was awake. A teetotaller cannot be made to drink alcoholic liquor, or even water that he is told is wine or whiskey; an honest man cannot be made to steal; a peaceful man to fight. A strong emotion—a deep-seated love or hatred—has more power over the subconscious mind than has any hypnotic suggestion. So considered, “Trilby,” for example, is based on a pure absurdity—no influence of Svengali’s could ever have made Trilby give up her love for little Billee.

Hutchison finds that “the best subject for hypnosis is the person who has the intelligence to understand what is asked of him and the ability to concentrate his mind upon it.” Intelligent co-operation is a desideratum. It is all but impossible, in most cases, to hypnotize an insane person or an imbecile.

Professor Wetterstrand, a famous psychiatrist and hypnotist of Stockholm, utilizes a method of hypnosis which, it is claimed, is effective in about 97 per cent of the cases that come before him—numbering at the time 3,148 persons. He employs what may, perhaps, justly be called mass hypnosis. Instead of the usual procedure of handling one patient at a time, he “hypnotizes his patients wholesale.” He uses two large rooms, heavily carpeted and curtained, to prevent noise and resonance. Both rooms are furnished with sofas, reclining chairs, and also with easy chairs for patients who do not wish to recline.

Beginning his work with patients who have been hypnotized on previous occasions, he goes from one patient to another, merely whispering suggestions into each patient’s ear, quite inaudible to the other patients. Those thus hypnotized at the beginning he soon awakes. By thus showing that he has full control of the situation, a feeling of confidence is produced in the waiting newcomers, who have never before been under this treatment. The very sight of so many hypnotized persons exercises an hypnotic influence on all present—a form of mass suggestion. It is then an easy matter to induce the hypnotic sleep even in those who have come for their first treatment.

In his recent work, “Suggestion and Auto-suggestion,” Prof. Charles Baudouin has elucidated the new theory of suggestion offered by Emile Coué, referred to previously.

Coué, as I have already said, seems to have established the fact that we have considerable power over ourselves through imagination, curative results being obtained without the aid of a second person to make suggestions. In a sense, the cures are effected by hypnotism, but the hypnotism is self-hypnotism, auto-suggestion. He holds that hypnotic suggestion, and the ordinary waking suggestion made by a second person, are merely different methods of applying auto-suggestion. The cures are effected by “creative imagination.” The will in these matters is negative, and must be as far as possible eliminated. It is obstructive, not creative. If the will and the imagination are in conflict, the powers of imagination are virtually nullified. “In a conflict between will and imagination, the power of imagination is in direct proportion to the square of the will-power,” declares Coué.

It is very desirable that the patient should have faith in his physician—faith in the efficacy of his treatment. But, as remarked by that experienced psycho-therapist, Dr. Albert E. Davis, the patient must take his share in combating the disease, and then he will understand that his cure had come through no other source than his own mind.

To one who has given the matter little or no study, Coué’s famous formula, “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” or “My pain is passing away,” frequently repeated aloud, may appear to be a fruitless, not to say foolish, procedure. But there are thousands of persons who know by experience that the method is in many cases highly efficient; not only helpful but actually curative. As Dr. Davis well points out, the message which is uttered is being conveyed to a part of the mind—the subconscious—“which is incapable of controversial argument, and constant repetition will have its effect. That mind, prior to this, has implicitly believed its possessor every time he said ‘I am very ill.’ Why should it not be convinced, even more by suggestions which are in conformity with the natural desire to be strong and healthy?”⁠[3]

Another very interesting development of “creative imagination” is pointed out in “Sex Antagonism,” by Heape. It is generally believed among scientists that stories of pre-natal “markings” are mere superstition, and undoubtedly most of them are fancied resemblances without connection with any previous experience on the part of the mother. Nevertheless the instances given by Mr. Heape must be considered unless they can be disproved. For example, a lizard dropped from the ceiling upon the naked breast of a pregnant woman. She declared (imagined) that her child would be born with a mark of a lizard on its breast. It was. Again, a woman’s husband returned from the war with his face slashed in the form of a cross. The woman imagined that her expected child would be born with such a disfiguring slash. The child was born with the marking on its face.

According to this school of thought, it was not fear that the markings would appear on the child (as is claimed by most persons who believe in pre-natal markings) that produced the resulting disfigurement; it was the result of creative imagination. For the woman, the marking, in imagination, had already been made. Had she taken an opposite attitude, and visualized the face and body of the infant as perfectly normal, it is most likely that no “birth-mark” would have been created,—created, as a matter of fact, by the mother herself.

Wetterstrand, Forel, Krafft-Ebing and others have shown that in certain individuals redness and swelling of the skin, and even blistering or ulceration, may be induced by hypnotism. I have myself witnessed the appearance of a white cross on a woman’s forearm by auto-suggestion. There can be no doubt that the genuine cases of “stigmatization”—supposed by the faithful to be the result of a divine miracle rewarding holiness—are the effect of auto-suggestion—imagination. In all, some 150 cases of stigmatization have been recorded, the three I am about to mention having all occurred within the last hundred years. No scientist today regards the wounds—replicas of the injuries stated to have been caused by the nails in Jesus’ hands and feet—which appeared in the hands and feet of Maria von Morll, for example, as “faked.” The same may be said of the stigmata of Katharine Emmerich and Louise Lateau. The verdict of science is that these women were hysterical invalids, not pious impostors. These wounds are, declared Professor Delboeuf, a psychologist of Liège, “auto-suggestive phenomena resulting from the intensive concentration of the attention upon the wounds of Christ.” An equal concentration of the mind on the part of an expectant mother might well produce, by suggestion, any form of birth-mark on the body of an unborn infant. At least, there is no positive evidence to the contrary; although, as remarked above, most of such cases reported are the result of mere superstitious credulity.

Good health, normality, if imagined to exist, may, within certain limits (or under certain conditions) be created. This at least is the doctrine of the New Nancy School. That Coué has to his credit many cures effected by his new methods of auto-suggestion is conceded by most, if not all, practising psycho-therapists who have investigated the subject.

Auto-suggestion is founded on “the great law that the subconscious part of mind governs the physical body, and in its turn is controlled by reasoned suggestions from the conscious mind.” It is not even necessary that the suggestions made in the first instance should be true: they may be quite contrary to fact and apparently opposed to all reason. By reiteration the desired effect is produced, and they become true. When a person in pain persists in saying “I have no pain,” or an inveterate smoker in saying “I have no desire to smoke,” the one is opposed to sensation and the other to fact. The effect, however, is soon apparent; the pain lessens, and the desire to smoke is diminished.”⁠[4]

It should not be forgotten, in giving oneself auto-suggestive treatment, that pain is a signal. To remove pain without finding out what has caused it may be a very dangerous procedure. But as a temporary measure, or as a means of alleviation of the pain arising from an affliction already diagnosed and under treatment, it may be of great value.

Most persons today are not averse to speaking casually of the power of mind over matter, but when it comes to a practical application of the principle they are inclined to “side-step.” Yet it is self-evident that many persons increase their discomforts and ills by brooding over them. It is equally self-evident that pain and even illness can in many cases be allayed or eliminated by an opposite course—an affirmation of well-being, of health and joy.

The basis of “Christian Science” and other mind-healing cults is faith, and faith cures are not all legendary. None of them is “miraculous.” Auto-suggestion, imagination, working on the subconscious mind, can accomplish wonders. The task of the scientist is to find out what are the limitations of these psycho-therapeutic methods of treatment. The Christian Scientist believes that there are no inherent limitations—and dies.