Of all people the insane are the least suggestible, and those whose mental disturbances are severe are usually absolutely unsuggestible. All hypnotists of experience agree in this. This is probably due to the fact that the diseased inhibitions or conditions of stimulation attain such an intensity in the brains of the insane, that they are no longer capable of being dissociated by means of suggestion. And if one should succeed in spite of this in hypnotizing an insane person, the majority of the curing suggestions either do not act at all, or only act transitorily; those suggestions which are directed against delusions act least of all. A lunatic, Mrs. X., for example, believed that she was Mrs. Y. I was able to hypnotize her, and succeeded in suggesting sleep, appetite, and even posthypnotic hallucinations, successfully to her. However, when I declared most energetically during the hypnosis that she knew quite well that she was Mrs. X., and not Mrs. Y., that the latter idea had only been a nonsensical delusion which she would now laugh at, she shook her head in negation persistently during the hypnotic sleep (as long as I stated this), showing me in this way that she could not accept this suggestion.

One uses the cerebrum of the hypnotized persons as an instrument when employing suggestion. This instrument is functionally deranged in the insane, and for this reason the suggestion does not take on. The failures in mental diseases are the best proofs that the power of hypnosis lies in the brain of the hypnotized, and not in the brain of the hypnotist.

So much that is untrue has been said of the relationship of hypnotism to mental disorders, and so many false doctrines are spread about, which are devoid of all thorough foundations of observation, and which are based only on unsupported statements, that it will be worth while to consider the subject some-163 what more closely. I cannot emphasize sufficiently that suggestibility is an absolutely normal characteristic of the normal human brain.

As we have seen, the Charcot school, on the other hand, wishes to define hypnosis as a form of hysteria. But hysteria is a disease, and actually a disease of the mind, a functional abnormality of the disposition of the brain; it has nothing whatsoever to do with "hysteria" - i.e., uterus. In Charcot's teaching of hysteria many errors have crept in beside the numerous correct observations; these errors are connected with the "somatic" ideas. In my opinion, which agrees with Bern-heim's, the zones and points hysterogenes, the supposed pathognomonic connection of hysteria with conditions of irritation of the ovaries, typical hemianesthesia, and the like, are all artificial things - i.e., symptoms which are fixed by being called attention to, as all symptoms in the hysterical are. Hysteria is a dissociative weakness of the brain, by means of which a pathological autosuggestibility is caused. A marked tendency to more or less transitory functional disturbances of all sorts, from the most localized pain or convulsion, from the most localized anaesthesia or paralysis to the most general mental disturbance, is produced by this dissociative weakness. All these hysterical disturbances can fix themselves readily, and can persist for years. They can, it is true, even then still be cured. But certain transitions from the more transient hysterical nerve disturbances to severe and even irreparable mental disturbances and other severe neuroses also exist. Still, this more often points to combinations than to real transition forms.

Pure hysteria is mostly a constitutional malady, and is incurable as such - i.e., as an abnormal characteristic of the brain. One only cures the symptoms, and not the constitutional disposition. There is, however, such a thing as acquired hysteria, which can arise from the ill-usage and exhaustion of the brain, and which merges into the confused idea of neurasthenia.1 In the same way irritations of the peripheral nervous system can lead to it by a reaction on the brain. I do not wish to deny this. These cases are for the most part curable. There is, further, a large number of mixtures of milder and more severe predisposition, and "nervous" (i.e., cerebral) constitution with acquired damages.

1 Everything that is possible and impossible is railed by the term "neurasthenia," from general paralysis of the insane, paranoia, and melancholia down to hysteria, Hypochrondnaais is at the bottom of all this confusion of ideas, however.

I asked Dr. Babinski, one of Professor Charcot's assistants, at the Congress on Physiological Psychology, held in Paris in 1889, how he could explain that all of us who had been hypnotic pupils of Liebault and Bemheim could hypnotize from eighty to ninety per cent of all people, no matter whether they are German, French, Swedish, Russian, Dutch, or English? Did he consider that these eighty or ninety per cent. were all hysterical. If this were so, the idea of hysteria was being extended at the Salpetriere in such a way that I would protest against it energetically. To this I received the following reply: "We protest in the Salpetriere that we extend the idea of hysteria too widely, but tares hysteriques, at least, must be present if any one is hypnotizable." This controversy was, however, not included in the published account of the congress. Still, I have repeated it accurately here, because it shows how the matter lies.

According to Babinski, ninety to ninety-six per cent. of the population (I hypnotized as many as this) would therefore have tares hysteriques! Thank God, the conditions are at all events not so bad as all that 1

Dr. Babinski has not seen his way during the following twelve years to materially amend his error, for he defined the idea of hysteria in 1901 as follows:1 " Etat psychique rendant le sujet qui s'y trouve capable de s'autosuggestionner. L'hys-terie se manifeste principalement par des troubles primitifs et accessoirement par quelques troubles secondaires. Ce qui caracterise les premiers, c'est qu'il est possible de les reproduire par suggestion avec une exactitude rigoureuse chez certains sujets et do les faire disparaitre sous 1'influence exclusive de la persuasion. Ce qui caraterise les troubles secondaires c'est qu'ils sont etroitement subordonnes a des troubles primitifs,"

1 Babinski, "Definition de I'hysterie." (Comptes rendus de la Societe de Neourlogie de Paris.)