In order to exclude it, or at all events to isolate it, it was necessary to abandon hypnosis. But hypnosis had been of immense help in the cathartic treatment, by widening the field of the patient’s consciousness and putting within his reach knowledge which he did not possess in his waking life. It seemed no easy task to find a substitute for it. While I was in this perplexity, a recollection came to my help of an experiment which I had often witnessed while I was with Bernheim. When the subject awoke from the state of somnambulism, he seemed to have lost all memory of what had happened while he was in that state. But Bernheim maintained that the memory was present all the same; and if he insisted on the subject remembering, if he asseverated that he knew it all and had only to say it, and if at the same time he laid his hand on the subject’s forehead, then the forgotten memories used in fact to return, hesitatingly at first, but eventually in a flood and with complete clarity. I determined that I would act in the same way. My patients, I reflected, must in fact “know” all the things which had hitherto only been made accessible to them by hypnosis; and assurances and encouragement on my part, assisted perhaps by the touch of my hand, would, I thought, have the power of forcing the forgotten facts and connections into consciousness. No doubt this seemed a more laborious process than putting them under hypnosis, but it might prove highly instructive. So I abandoned hypnosis, only retaining my practice of requiring the patient to lie upon a sofa while I sat behind him, seeing him, but not seen myself. III My expectations were fulfilled; I was set free from hypnosis. But along with the change in technique, the process of catharsis took on a new complexion. Hypnosis had screened from view an interplay of forces which now came in sight, and the understanding of which gave a solid foundation to my theory.