I have induced all the phenomena detailed and many others, as Liebeault, Bernheim, and others have done, in my hypnotized.

However, as Bernheim has rightly emphasized, one need not allow one's self to be blinded by the impression of these facts, which appear to be almost terrifying and phantastic. One should, further, not overlook the other side of the phenomenon - that is, the resistance of the brain activity of the hypnotized person against the interference of a strange person. Blind automatic obedience of the hypnotized is never complete; suggestion always has its limits, which are sometimes wider and sometimes narrower, and may vary considerably in the same individual.

The hypnotized person protects himself in two ways: consciously by means of his reasoning logic, and unconsciously by autosuggestion. I lift the arm of a hypnotized and say that it is stiff. He struggles to bring it. down, straining vigorously, and ultimately succeeds. Still, the feeling of the exertion which he had been put to brings him all the more surely into my bands, since it shows him my superior power. A little trick suffices to force him. I say for the second time, "I lift your arm into the air with force, with magnetism." This is enough to prevent it from falling again. I hold my hand near his, without touching it, and compel him to lift it above his head by means of the power of his suggestibility.

However, the resistance was present. If this is not rapidly conquered, the hypnotized believes in his power of resistance, and can oppose a number of suggestions. Some people can lose their suggestibility entirely by energetic considerations of reason and exertion of will. This takes place more often in response to the talking over of other people, and still more often if the hypnotized loses his respect, trust, or affection for the hypnotist, from some cause or other. Disturbances of mood and fear play a great part in this; they can partly or wholly destroy the suggestibility, either temporarily or even permanently. As a rule, the hypnotist retains what he has already gained. If he has failed repeatedly by his want of skill in a number of suggestions, it will be extremely difficult for him to gain the upper hand later. The autosuggestion that this or that cannot be produced in him, or that this hypnotist cannot do it, takes more and more hold of the hypnotized. For example, I touch a hypnotized person's hand, and say that I make it insensible and dead. However, he still feels, and does not believe me; and when I ask him, "Have you felt anything?" he answers, "Yes." It is very difficult to produce anaesthesia gradually in such cases. This depends partly on the sleep being not deep enough, but not always. I have produced anesthesia by simple hypotaxis. For example, I do not touch the fingers which I failed to render anaesthetic, but cause the hypnotized to believe that I do, and that he does not feel anything. Then I am able in the next hypnosis to procure a partial anaesthesia gradually, by very light touching. It is just the same with amnesia. If one does not succeed in producing amnesia in two or three sittings, it will become extremely difficult. However, one may succeed at times, with the aid of certain tricks. For example, one gives the hypnotized a drink of water, and tells him that it is a sleeping-draught, which will make him amnesic, and the like. In short, as Bernheim has said, the hypnotized is not a perfect automaton. He frequently disputes the suggestion, especially at the beginning, and at times refuses it. I might almost say that the chief secret lies in investing the suggestion with the subjective character of a dream, of what has been experienced, perceived, or acted before it has been conceived by the hypnotized person. If it is first conceived as a simple perception, the suggestion only succeeds with difficulty, if at all. Imitation is of great value, and the same may especially be said of the impression which the hypnotist produces on the hypnotized by showing him the results of a case. Those experiments which succeed most easily in the demonstrated case, as a rule, will succeed most easily with the person who watches the demonstration.

The hypnotized can resist each suggestion with a little exertion during the lighter degrees of hypnotic influence which Liebeault and Bernheim call somnolence. He becomes somewhat more suggestible if he remains quite passive.

It is a fundamental error to believe that the hypnotized is under the complete dependence of the hypnotist. This dependence is a very relative one, and is encumbered by all sorts of conditions. It may be destroyed by mistrust, ill-humor, want of respect, etc., at one stroke. Idiotic deceptions, absurdities, and things which are distasteful to the character, inclinations, or convictions of the hypnotized, can only be suggested as sorts of dreams in hypnosis, or can only be suggested posthypnoti-cally for a short time. They will then be refused later by the recollected and reconcentrated or again well-associated waking activity of the brain of the person who has been hypnotized. If one plays too much with such things, one risks losing the whole of one's influence. Suggestion means a sort of tournament between the dynamisms of two brains; the one gains the mastery over the other up to a certain point, but only under the condition that it deals skillfully and delicately with the other, that it. stimulates and uses its inclinations skillfully, and above all things, that it does not make its dealings go against the grain.

Trust and belief on the part of the hypnotized are fundamental conditions for success. One can see clearly here how so-called freewill is a slave to the affections of mood - i.e., how the direction of will is guided by feelings more than by anything else. One influences the will in a positive sense by sympathy, and in the reverse sense by antipathy. Those resolutions which are governed by reason alone take place, as a rule, only when sentimentality is present in minimal traces or is absent altogether.