Bernheim wrote in 1888: 1 "Tout medecin d'hopital qui dans son service clinique, n'arrive pas a hypnotiser 80 pour 100 de ses malades, doit se dire qu'il n'a pas encore 1'experience suffisante en la matiere et s'abstenir de jugement precipite sur la question." I can fully endorse this sentence. The statistical records detailed above agree entirely with it. Still, one could justly substitute ninety per cent. for eighty per cent.; but one must except the insane from this percentage.

Everyone is naturally more or less suggestible, and thus hyp-notizable. It is true that some people boast that they only believe that which their reason proves to them to be clear and consciously logical, or at least which it has rendered very plausible. Such persons, however, only show herein that they lack the most elementary self-criticism. Unconsciously and hypo-consciously, we constantly believe in things which do not exist, or only exist in part. For example, we believe without question in the reality of the perceptions of our senses, which, however, primarily depend on an edifice of conclusions, with the help of which the sensations are formed. Hence, we are deceived almost regularly by false perceptions (hallucinations). Everyone experiences disappointments, places his trust in other persons, in maxims or systems which do not justify his confidence, etc. These are proofs that we are intuitively credulous, for otherwise our thinking would not be possible. We would never think or do anything, from sheer hesitation, if we would wait until each reason for our thoughts or deeds were mathematically or even only sufficiently inductively proved before we could accept them. We, however, neither think nor act without having a certain feeling that our thoughts and deeds are right, without being able actually to believe in them. The dynamisms (arranged energy complexes) which cause belief and intuition are complexes of brain activities, which to a great extent - at least, momentarily - take place below the level of the mirror of our supereonsciousness. And it is here that we find the explanation of suggestibility.

1 Bemheim, Revue de Thypnotisme, May 1, 1888. 57

When we long for something very much which we do not possess, a contrast impression of the unattainability of our wish not infrequently presents itself all the more intensely. This psychological condition becomes especially marked in the longing for subjective feelings. If we wish to force them to appear, they disappear. If we attempt to force sleep consciously, we remain sleepless. It we attempt a coitus in the same way, we become for the time impotent. In a similar manner, if we attempt to force ourselves to be pleased we only become annoyed, and so on. And the more force the superconscious will attempts to exercise, the greater will often be the defeat, while the same longed-for feelings appear quite by themselves as soon as one can give in to belief without concentration, especially when one has recourse to the assistance of corresponding conceptions of the imagination.

The person who wishes by all means to be hypnotized, who longs for hypnosis, who has a clear idea of its nature, and wishes for the results of suggestion, cannot divert his attention from the psychological processes, and is difficult to hypnotize or is unhypnotizable. This holds good, at all events, as long as he cannot be distracted or rendered psychically passive. The more frequently and the more energetically a person endeavors to become passive, the more certainly will he fail; but it is more especially intense mental excitement, fear, all alterations of temper in general, mental disturbances, and a definite resolve to resist the hypnotist, which render, as a rule, hypnosis impossible. When the first hypnosis fails, I seek for hidden disturbances, which I usually find; then I soothe the patient, and the hypnosis succeeds. Every mentally healthy person is more or less hypnotizable, only there are certain temporary conditions of the mind - i.e., of the cerebral activity - which can prevent the hypnosis.

It used to be said that those people who do not want to be hypnotized cannot be hypnotized - at all events, at the first attempt. In my opinion, one should not rely on this statement too much, for it is based more or less on the psychologically erroneous assumption that the freedom of the human will is essential. A person must be able not to will in order that be may actually and willingly not will. But suggestion acta most quickly and with greatest certainty by surprising the imagination, by taking it unawares. We have just seen how it is disturbed by a protracted premeditation. An easily suggestible person, who has never been hypnotized before, can be converted into the relatively "will-less" puppet of another person in a few seconds. I have often noticed that in response to a sort of contrast action such persons who make fun of and laugh at hypnotism, and openly assert "that no one can send them to sleep," are just the ones who are most rapidly hypnotized if they do not offer direct resistance, and at times even in spite of the offered resistance. It seems as if the challenge given to hypnotism creates in them, in opposition, an uneasy idea of their own uncertainty, which exposes them all the more surely to hypnotism. This is just the reverse of the failure of hypnosis in persons who long for it, and are afraid that it will not succeed with them.

On the other hand, unprejudiced, uneducated persons are, as a rule, particularly easy to hypnotize by suggestion, without that which one intends to do always being noticed by them. They act and believe all that is suggested to them, and go to sleep in one or two minutes before they know what is happening, and often even after they have been of opinion that others who have been hypnotized a moment before are malingerers and the doctor a dupe. The majority of the insane are undoubtedly the most difficult to hypnotize, because the pathological permanent condition of irritation of their brain supports a constant relative tension of the attention on the impressions of the patient, which robs the suggestion of nearly all the paths of entrance and of all power.