Thus I had my choice, either to forbear using the cathartic method in most of the cases suitable for it, or to venture the attempt without somnambulism by using hypnotic influence in light or even doubtful cases. It made no difference of what degree (following the accepted scales of hypnotism) the hypnotism was which did not correspond to somnambulism, for every direction of suggestibility is independent of the other and nothing is prejudicial towards the evocation of catalepsy, automatic movements and similar phenomena for the purpose of facilitating the awakening of forgotten recollections. I soon relinquished the habit of deciding the degree of hypnotism, as in a great number of cases it incited the patients’ resistance, and clouded the confidence which I needed for the more important psychic work. Moreover, in mild grades of hypnotism I soon tired of hearing, after the assurance and command, “You will sleep, sleep now!” such protests as, “But, Doctor, I am not sleeping.” I was then forced to bring in the very delicate distinction, saying, “I do not mean the usual sleep, I mean the hypnotic,—you see, you are hypnotized, you cannot open your eyes”; or, “I really don’t want you to sleep.” I, myself, am convinced that many of my colleagues using psychotherapy know how to get out of such difficulties more skilfully than I; they can proceed differently. I, however, believe that if through the use of a word one can so frequently become embarrassed, it is better to avoid the word and the embarrassment. Wherever the first attempt did not produce either somnambulism or a degree of hypnotism with pronounced bodily changes, I dropped the hypnosis and demanded only “concentration,” I ordered the patient to lie on his back and close his eyes as a means of reaching this “concentration.” With little effort I obtained as profound a degree of hypnotism as was possible. But inasmuch as I forbore using somnambulism, I perhaps robbed myself of a preliminary stipulation without which the cathartic method seems inapplicable. For it is based on the fact that in the altered state of consciousness the patients have at their disposal such recollections and recognize such connections which do not apparently exist in their normal conscious state. Wherever the somnambulic broadening of consciousness lacks there must also be an absence of the possibility of bringing about a causal relation which the patient cannot give to the doctor as something known to him, and it is just the pathogenic recollections “which are lacking from the memory of the patients in their usual psychic states or only exist in a most condensed state” (preliminary communication).