The question is taken by the patient to mean that the doctor expects that the prick will not be felt--or why should he ask? The hint is accepted and the insensibility established, though its unreal nature is shown by the fact that the patient is not especially disposed to burn or injure the limb, unlike the sufferer from a true loss of sensation, who is always liable to such an accident owing to the lack of the protective sense of pain. I believe that this is the true explanation for many cases, and put it forward as a good example of receptivity. The insensitiveness is similarly explained by Babinski,[10] who uses a different method of examination. He blindfolds the patient, who must not have been subjected to a previous test, and stimulating him variously in different places asks what he feels. This avoids the suggestion of loss of sensation, and the result is that Babinski finds few examples of such loss in cases where the 'Do you feel that?' method would produce many positive results. [Footnote 10: _Hysteria or Pithiatism and Nervous Troubles of Reflex Order._ London University Press.] It may also be explained by a dissociation of consciousness, in which the split-off stream deals with the paralysed limb and therefore the main stream of consciousness knows nothing about the prick. The difference between the two theories is not so great as appears, for the control of the supposed loss of sensation, once it is established, finds its home in a split-off stream, and the process I describe is only a stage in the dissociation. I must admit, however, to seeing cases where a hysterical loss of voice of long duration is accompanied by a loss of sensation in the throat which is not explicable by receptivity, and it is possible for the dissociation to be directly responsible for the loss. Jung expresses sound views when he writes:-- 'It should long ago have been realised that a suggestion is only accepted by one it suits.... This pseudo-scientific talk about suggestion is based upon the unconscious superstition that suggestion actually possesses some magic power. No one succumbs to suggestion unless from the very bottom of his heart he be willing to co-operate.'[11] [Footnote 11: _Analytical Psychology_, p. 469. Bailliere, Tindall & Cox, 1917.] Whilst stripping suggestion of its magic I by no means deny its power. Let one person at a dinner suggest that the fish is tainted and he will generally have one or two supporters who would have eaten it without a doubt of its freshness if no one had cast suspicion upon it; or let one of a class of medical students say with sufficient assurance that he hears a murmur over a patient's heart and, even if the heart sounds are quite ordinary, others will hear it too.