Group Psychology and The Analysis of The EgoFreud, Sigmund
Science
Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego
Freud, Sigmund
Ego (Psychology); Psychoanalysis; Social psychology
It is true that hypnosis can also be evoked in other ways, for instance
by fixing the eyes upon a bright object or by listening to a monotonous
sound. This is misleading and has given occasion to inadequate
physiological theories. As a matter of fact these procedures merely
serve to divert conscious attention and to hold it riveted. The
situation is the same as if the hypnotist had said to the subject: 'Now
concern yourself exclusively with my person; the rest of the world is
quite uninteresting.' It would of course be technically inexpedient for
a hypnotist to make such a speech; it would tear the subject away from
his unconscious attitude and stimulate him to conscious opposition. The
hypnotist avoids directing the subject's conscious thoughts towards his
own intentions, and makes the person upon whom he is experimenting sink
into an activity in which the world is bound to seem uninteresting to
him; but at the same time the subject is in reality unconsciously
concentrating his whole attention upon the hypnotist, and is getting
into an attitude of _rapport_, of transference on to him. Thus the
indirect methods of hypnotising, like many of the technical procedures
used in making jokes, have the effect of checking certain distributions
of mental energy which would interfere with the course of events in the
unconscious, and they lead eventually to the same result as the direct
methods of influence by means of staring or stroking.[58]
Ferenczi has made the true discovery that when a hypnotist gives the
command to sleep, which is often done at the beginning of hypnosis, he
is putting himself in the place of the subject's parents. He thinks that
two sorts of hypnosis are to be distinguished: one coaxing and soothing,
which he considers is modelled upon the mother, and another threatening,
which is derived from the father.[59] Now the command to sleep in
hypnosis means nothing more nor less than an order to withdraw all
interest from the world and to concentrate it upon the person of the
hypnotist. And it is so understood by the subject; for in this
withdrawal of interest from the outer world lies the psychological
characteristic of sleep, and the kinship between sleep and the state of
hypnosis is based upon it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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