I find that in the subconscious hypnoidal state consciousness
is vague and memory is diffused, so that experiences apparently
forgotten come in bits and scraps to the foreground of
consciousness. Emotional excitement is calmed, voluntary activity
is somewhat passive, and suggestions meet with little resistance.
The induced subconscious hypnoidal state is a rest state, a
state of physical and mental relaxation. It is a state of rest
and relaxation that is specially amenable to psychotherapeutic
influences. The important results obtained by me led to a closer
study of what I then thought was a peculiar mental state
designated by me as the _subwaking_, or the _hypnoidal_ state.
The subwaking, or the hypnoidal state is essentially an
intermediary state belonging apparently to the borderland of mental
life. On the one hand, the hypnoidal state touches on the waking
condition; on the other it merges into sleep and hypnosis. _A
close study of the hypnoidal state shows that it differs from the
hypnotic state proper and that it can by no means be identified
with light hypnosis._
In my years of work on patients and subjects, I have observed the
presence of the hypnoidal state before the development of hypnosis
and also before the onset of sleep. When again the hypnotic or
sleep state passes into waking, the hypnoidal state reappears.
The hypnoidal state then may be regarded as an intermediate and
transitional state.
A somewhat related state has been long known in psychological
literature as the hypnagogic state which precedes the oncome
of sleep and is rich in hallucinations known under the term of
_hypnagogic_ hallucinations. In coming out of sleep, a closely
related state may be observed, a state which I have termed
_hypnapagogic_. In both states, hypnagogic and hypnapagogic,
dream-hallucinations hold sway.
The hypnagogic and hypnapagogic states do not belong to light
hypnosis, as it can hardly be claimed that men fall into light
hypnosis twice, or possibly more than that, every day of their
life. We do not go into light hypnosis with every nap we take. We
do, however, go into the hypnoidal state when we pass into sleep or
come out of sleep. Every drowsy state has the hypnoidal state as
one of its constituents; every sleep state is preceded and followed
by the hypnoidal state.
Hypnosis may be regarded as belonging to the abnormal mental
states, while the hypnoidal state is more closely allied to waking
and sleep, and belongs to the normal, physiological, mental states.
At first, I regarded the hypnoidal state as peculiar, but as I
proceeded with my observations and experiments I could not help
coming to the conclusion that the hypnoidal state is found in all
the representatives of animal life and is as normal as waking and
sleep.
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