The first time I tried to put the patient into a hypnoidal state was nine at night. I put out the electric light, lighted a candle, and proceeded to put him into a hypnoidal condition. The patient began to shiver, to tremble, to breathe fast and heavily, the pulse rose to over 125, while the heart began to thump violently, as if it were going to jump out. He was like one paralyzed, the muscles of the chest labored hard, and under my pressure the muscle fibers hardened, crackled, became rigid, and he could not reply when spoken to. It took me some time to quieten him. He was clearly in a state of great panic. I opened his eyelids and found the eye ball turned up. The whole body was easily put in a state of catalepsy. Clearly the patient was not in a hypnoidal state, he was in a state of hypnosis. Night after night he fell into states of hypnosis with all the symptoms of intense fear attacks. When the fear attacks subsided the depths of the hypnotic state proportionately diminished. In my various clinical and laboratory experimental work, covering a period of a quarter of a century, I have gradually come to the conclusion that fear and hypnosis are interrelated. In fact I am disposed to think that the hypnotic state is an ancient state, a state of fear cataplexy, or rather trance obedience. While the hypnoidal state is a primitive sleep state, the hypnotic condition is a primitive, fear condition, still present in lowly formed organisms. After some time the general fear instinct becomes alleviated. The patient goes by habit into a trance hypnotic state under the influence of the hypnotizer in whom he gains more confidence. The patient gets into a state of trance obedience to the hypnotizer of whom he is in awe, and who can control the patient’s fear instinct. Man obeys the commands, “the suggestions” of the hypnotizer, of the master whom he subconsciously fears, and who inspires him with awe, with “confidence-fear”. The crowd, the community, “public opinion,” the mob, the leader, the priest, the magician, the medicine man, are just such forces, such authorities to procure the slavish obedience of the subconscious described as hypnosis. Soldiers and slaves fall most easily into such states. Man has been trained in fear for milleniums, in fear of society, custom, fashion, belief, and the authority of crowd and mob. He fears to stand alone, he must go with the crowd. Man is a social being, a hypnotized, somnambulic creature. He walks and acts like a hypnotized slave. Man is a social somnambulist who believes, dreams, and acts at the order of the mob or of its leader. Man belongs to those somnambulists who become artificial, suggested, automatic personalities with their eyes fully open, seeing and observing nothing but what is suggested to them.