Suggestion and Autosuggestion

SUGGESTION AND AUTOSUGGESTION A Psychological and Pedagogical Study Based upon the Investigations Made by the New Nancy School By - CHARLES BAUDOUIN Professor at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute and Occasional Professor at the University of Geneva Author of "Culture de la Force Morale," "Symbolisme ct Psychoanalyse," etc., etc. Translated from the French by EDEN and CEDAR PAUL NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1921 Copyright, 1921 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Imo. Dedicated with grateful acknowledgments to EMILE COUE the steadfast Worker and Pioneer TRANSLATORS' PREFACE The dissociation of hypnotism, from mysticism and super stition was efficiently begun by two investigators, Alex andre Bertrand and James Braid. Bertrand (Traite du somnambtdisme, Paris, 1823 ; Du magnetisme animal en France, Paris, 1826) insisted especially upon the psychological determinants of the phenomena in ques tion. He maintained that what we now call the hypnotic state was brought about through the influence of the imagination of the patients acting upon themselves. Herein we have the germ of Cone's theory of autosug gestion as expounded in the following pages. Braid, on the other hand (various writings, from 1841 to his death in 1860), inclined at the outset rather to the physi ological explanation of what he was the first to term "hypnotism." It is interesting to note that Braid was a pioneer in the therapeutic use of reflective autosugges tion. He describes his own sufferings, in September, 1844, from a severe attack of muscular rheumatism, which had made it impossible for him to sleep for three successive nights. He then hypnotized himself in the presence of two friends. "At the expiration of nine minutes they aroused me, and, to my agreeable surprise, I was quite free from pain, being able to move in any way with perfect ease. ... I had seen like results with many patients ; but it is one thing to hear of pain, and another to feel it. My suffering was so exquisite that I could not imagine anyone else ever suffered so intensely 7 8 TRANSLATORS' PREFACE as myself on that occasion; and therefore I merely ex pected mitigation, so that I was truly and agreeably surprised to find myself quite free from pain. A week thereafter I had a slight return, which I re moved by hypnotizing myself once more; and I have remained quite free from rheumatism ever since, now nearly six years. ' ' The observation is quoted by Arthur Edward Waite in his biographical introduction to Braid on Hypnotism ( pp. 45-6) . To the contemporary reader, and above all to students of Coue and Baudouin, it is obvious that the essential feature in the cure was not the "hypnotism" but the autosuggestion. Yet the idea that unconscious autosuggestion is re sponsible for many of our troubles, moral and physical, was slow to mature. Even to-day, people fail to recog nize that they are largely wrong when they speak of " the ills that flesh is heir to," and that they should rather in many cases speak of " the ills that fancy breeds." Still more slowly has come the recognition that in reflective autosuggestion, scientifically applied, we have in very truth the faith that moves mountains. Healers, official and unofficial, have at all times made use of the power of suggestion, but the use has been for the most part unconscious. James Goodhart, in his Harveian lectures on Common Neuroses (1894, p. 129), tells us that " there are many conditions in which the cure must come mainly from within, our function in chief being to call out this dormant power." But for Goodhart the " rational treatment " of disease was still to be found in skilled advice as to regimen and the like ; the " dormant power " of reflective autosuggestion was not yet revealed to his discerning gaze. In the most out standing British work on psychotherapeutics, J. Milne TRANSLATORS' PREFACE 9 Bramwell's Hypnotism (third edition, 1913), the word autosuggestion is not to be found in the index. Yet Bramwell inclines to accept the theory that the phe nomena of hypnotism are chiefly explicable by the con ception of " the subliminal consciousness," and he re cords as the main feature of this theory that " the es sential characteristic of the hypnotic state is the sub ject's power over his own organism." Here we obvi ously verge upon Coue's teaching. But the affiliations of that teaching can be best understood in the light of a brief analysis of the development of the theory of hyp notism subsequent to the days of Bertrand and Braid. Substantially, it may be said that the theory of the psychological determination of these phenomena now holds the field. Heidenhain and others cultivated the physiological theory with vigour, and for a time with success. Charcot and the Salpetriere school maintained that the phenomena of hypnotism were mainly, if not exclusively, morbid; that they were manifestations of major hysteria or hystero-epilepsy. But by serious in vestigators to-day it is generally admitted that the views of the Nancy school, the views of Li6bault and Bern- heim, represent the truth, and that the pathological theory of hypnotism now possesses no more than his torical interest. For twenty years A. A. Li6bault prac tised hypnotism at Nancy, having a gratuitous clinic for his poorer patients. He rediscovered that expectation is the primary factor in the causation of hypnotism, that increased susceptibility is the leading characteristic of the hypnotic state, and that the suggester's influence upon his subjects is exerted through mental rather than through bodily channels. Hippolyte Bernheim, pro fessor of medicine at Nancy, was the philosophical ex 10 TRANSLATORS' PREFACE pounder of these theories, and it is with the name of Bernheim (died in 1919, at the age of eighty) that the ideas of the first Nancy school are especially associated. Edouard Coue, as Charles Baudouin explains in his preface, has like Liebault devoted many of his best years to the practice of psychotherapeutics in a free clinic, for a time at Troyes and subsequently at Nancy. Baudouin is the first great theoretical exponent of Coue's teaching. He bears much the same relationship to Coue that Bern heim bore to Liebault. He and Coue will speak for them selves throughout the present volume. Enough here to insist on three of the most essential and novel features in the teaching of the New Nancy School: 1. The main factor in hypnotic phenomena is not heterosuggestion but autosuggestion; and, as a corol lary, the chief advantages of psychotherapeutics can be secured without a suggester and without the more salient features of the hypnotic state. 2. Of fundamental importance to success is what Coue terms "the law of reversed effort," the law that so long as the imagination is adverse, so long as a countersuggestion is at work, effort of the conscious will acts by contraries. We must think rightly, or rather must imagine rightly, before we can will rightly. In a word, our formula must not be, "who wills can"; but " "who thinks can" or "who imagines can." 3. The most significant phenomena of autosuggestion occur in the domain of the subconscious (unconscious). The new powers which autosuggestion offers to mankind are based upon the acquirement of a reflective control of the operations of the subconscious. Herein, as Bau douin shows in his Preface and his Conclusion, the teachings of the New Nancy School at once confirm and TRANSLATORS' PREFACE 11 supplement the theories of the Freudians and the data of psychoanalysis. In the subtitle of Suggestion and Autosuggestion we are told that it is a "psychological and pedagogical study." The educational applications of the teachings ofinterest the New and Nancy importance School than are, if the possible, curative of applications.even greater . It is not always easy to separate the two categories, for from a wide outlook the mentality of the majority of "normal" human beings, the products of what passes to-day by the name of education and the outcome of the suggestions of our exceedingly rudimentary social en vironment, may be said to have an essentially morbid quality and to need all the relief that can possibly be giventhe new by thepsychology, healing art. the Freudians Consequently equally the apostles with the of * wellpupils as therapeutists.of the New Nancy We find School, a whole are section educationists on "Edu as . cation and Child-Study" in Ernest Jones's Psycho analysis; while the American writer, Wilfrid Lay, has recently supplemented his volume Man's Unconscious Conflict by a work devoted to the educational side of Freudianism, and entitled The Child's Unconscious Mind. But the implications of Coue's practical dis coveries and of Baudouin's theories are destined to in fluence educational work more radically even than Freudianism can influence it. Intelligent educationists have long recognized that a large proportion of the effects of education, good or bad, are due to suggestion ; but a few years ago M. W. Keatinge, in his volume Suggestion in Education (first edition 1907, second edi tion 1911) criticized the term autosuggestion as mislead- 12 TRANSLATORS' PREFACE ing. He wrote, ' ' the idea is really suggested from with out, and appears to be 'self -suggested' only to the per son in whose mind it has been latent." Nevertheless, most careful readers of Baudouin's book will we think , agree that in education, as in psychotherapeutics, what goes on in the subject's subconscious is what really counts in the whole process, and that upon the success ful appeal to the subconscious largely depends the suc . Educationalcess of the teacher theory no will less have than to the be success wholly of reconsidered the healer.

Load more