Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887
Various
Science -- Periodicals
The second counter current that opposed itself to the French
neuropathologists, and produced the most lasting impression, is
expressed by the magic word "suggestion." A generation ago, Dr.
Liebault, the patient investigator and skillful physician, had
endeavored to make a remedial use of suggestion in his clinic at
Nancy. Charles Richet and others have since referred to it, but
Professor Bernheim was the first one to demonstrate its full
significance in the realm of hypnotism. According to him,
suggestion--that is, the influence of any idea, whether received
through the senses or in a hypersensible manner (_suggestion
mentale_)--is the key to all hypnotic phenomena. He has not been able
in a single case to verify the bodily phenomena of _grandehypnotisme_
without finding suggestion the primary cause, and on this account
denies the truth of the asserted physical causes. Bernheim says that
when the intense expectance of the subject has produced a compliant
condition, a peculiar capacity is developed to change the idea that
has been received into an action as well as a great acuteness of
acceptation, which together will produce all those phenomena that we
should call by the name of "pathological sleep," since they are only
separable in a gradual way from the ordinary sleep and dream
conditions. Bernheim is particularly strenuous that psychology should
appear in the foreground of hypnotism, and on this point has been
strongly upheld by men like Professors Beaunis and Richet.
The possibility of suggestion in waking conditions, and also a long
time after the sleep has passed off (_suggestions posthypnotiques ou
suggestions a (longue) echeance_), as well as the remarkable capacity
of subjects to change their personality (_changement de la
personnalite objectivation des types_), have been made the subject of
careful investigation. The voluntary production of bleeding and
stigmata through spiritual influence has been asserted, particularly
by Messrs. Tocachon, Bourru, and Burot. The judicial significance of
suggestion has been discussed by Professor Liegeois and Dr. Ladame.
Professor Pitres in Bordeaux is one of the suggestionists, though
differing in many points from the Nancy school.
This whole tendency brings into prominence the psychical influence,
while it denies the production of these results from purely physical
phenomena, endeavoring to explain them in a different manner. These
explanations carry us into two realms, the first of which has been
lately opened, and at present seems to abound more in enigmas than in
solutions.
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