"Where the normal man, with normal inclinations, will find pleasure, the abnormal man. with abnormal inclinations, will encounter pain, and vice versa. Pleasure and pain follow tendency, as the shadow follows the body."-T. H. Ribot.

"Our ego is the permanent nexus, which is never itself in a state of consciousness, but which holds states of consciousDess together."-Herbert Spencer.

"I hold that the enigma of hypnotism has no single answer which solves it. * * * I hold emphatically that hypnotic changes are primarily physiological, rather than pathological-supernormal, rather than abnormal.” -F. W. H. Myers.

CHAPTER VII.

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL-CONTINUED.

Suggestibility.

Effective mental healing is dependent upon certain conditions, one of which is receptivity on the part of the patient. His essential co-operation with the healer is analogous to that subsisting between pupil and teacher The cure is effected by rousing into normal activity soul powers lying dormant within, and not through the arbitrary imposition of any influence from without. The patient is not deceived-truth alone is presented to his mind, and when this reaches the plane of soul consciousness it is immediately recognized, accepted and applied. All genuine healing, therefore, in the last analysis, is self-healing. A sick person is one lacking in self-knowledge; yet this quality inheres in the soul, and the simple office of the healer is to bring it above the threshold of consciousness-to render the potential actual.

LEVER

SUGGESTION LEVER

SUGGESTION

HEALTH

ILLNESS

FIGURE 5. A Diagrammatic Representation of Suggestive Action.

At the same time it should be understood that failure of the subject to unhesitatingly accept

the suggestion does not prove an effectual bar. Reiteration of the suggestion under auspicious conditions may at last break down prejudice and give full effect to our efforts. This is wrought, it may be, not by direct conviction of the reason, but by gradual and unconscious acceptance on the part of the subconscious faculty. Though stoutly opposed by the objective thought, it is taken up, little by little, into the unconscious and worked out to a conclusion. A new thought or a new custom appeals more forcibly and more effectually to the subconscious.

It is common observation that, when we have been studying hard upon something new, with but little apparent progress, if we lay it by for a few days or weeks, without conscious thought upon it, on resuming our study we find that better progress is made. The suggestions have

had time to do their work and there has been a clarification of the mental turbidity.

Thus it is also that our opinions and prejudices undergo change by a process of unconscious rumination and unremembered reasoning. The subjective has been busy with its propositions, and, without our knowledge, our own deeper selves have been conducting our education.

The Hypnotic State.

The state most favorable for the reception of suggestion is that of hypnosis. In that state the mind of the subject is most en rapport with that of the operator, and the impression is correspondingly profound.

Hypnosis has its advantages and its disadvantages from the physician's point of view.

Mr. F. W. H. Myers, for many years con

THE HYPNOTIC STATE.

85

spicuous as a scientific investigator of psychic phenomena, well illustrates the value and action of hypnotism in the following words:

"In waking consciousness I am like the proprietor of a factory whose machinery I do not understand. My foreman-my subliminal self-weaves for me so many yards of broadcloth per diem (my ordinary vital processes as a matter of course). If I want any pattern more complex I have to shout my orders in the din of the factory, where only two or three inferior workmen hear me, and shift their looms in a small and scattered way. Such are the confused and capricious results of the first, the more familiar stages of hypnotic suggestion. At certain intervals, indeed, the foreman stops most of the looms, and uses the freed power to stoke the engine and to oil the machinery. This, in my metaphor, is sleep, and it will be effective hypnotic trance if I can get the foreman to stop still more of the looms, come out of his private room, and attend to my orders-my self-suggestions for their repair and rearrangement. The question for us proprietors then is how we can best get at our potent but secluded foremen; in what way we can make to our subliminal selves effective suggestions. And here I think we are for the present at the end of theory. We must look for guidance to actual experience, not to hypnotism alone, but to all forms of self-suggestion which are practically found to remove and soothe the pains and weariness of large masses of common men."

As a therapeutic measure in a large variety of ailments, hypnotism is entitled to much confidence and no fear of obloquy should deter one from its use. "Be physicians and not hypnotizers," says Dr. T. Lloyd Tuckey of Aberdeen, "but learn to apply hypnotism and be ready to use it in suitable cases.

"With all the resources of latter day scientific research at his disposal, there still remains a large field of disease which is the despair of the physician. A large section of it consists of disease caused by the imagi

nation or by causes which have had their first effect on the imagination. These, as is truly pointed out, are anything but imaginary diseases. It is in these cases that the method of treatment by suggestion strikes at the root of the evil in a manner that no other kind of treatment can approach.'

Professor H. H. Goddard, who has investigated the subject of mental healing very thoroughly, publishes a table compiled from 414 cases treated by hypnotism by Drs. Van Rhenterghem and Van Eeden. Of these, 71 were absolute failures, 92 were slightly or temporarily helped, 98 were permanently or decidedly ameliorated, 100 were cured, and 53 had results unknown. The investigation shows (1) that the deeper the hypnosis the larger the percentage of cures; (2) that not all cases are cured; (3) that some diseases are less amenable than others to cure by hypnotism.

Dr. J. Milne Bramwell of London recently reported 76 cases of dipsomania and chronic alcoholism treated by him by hypnotic suggestion. Twenty-eight were completely cured, 36 were improved and 12 were not helped. Only those who had remained abstainers for three years were reckoned as cured.

As a means of changing an evil or disagreeable bent of mind, in either children or adults, it is to be commended.

One need not hesitate to employ hypnotism in any case of chronic disease when there is no satisfactory response to other forms of treatment. The limit of its power for good in the hands of well-meaning physicians has not yet been determined.

Concerning the alleged ill-effects of repeated hypnosis all I need to say is that it is the uniform