Since suggestion has gained a certain recognition in medicine some curious opinions have been aired. The doctor and also the medical student hear a lot about suggestion, and read of it occasionally, too. The subject is often discussed theoretically in leisure hours, but, with a very few exceptions, it is neither taught nor learned in the schools. Those who pass judgment on it rarely possess any practical experience.

Arising out of this superficial discussion, a kind of official axiom, spoken with the utmost authoritative arrogance, is met with. This axiom takes something of the following shape:

Waking suggestion, or psychotherapy, is a very important and proper thing, and every capable medical man must have some acquaintance with it; it has actually been intuitively known from the earliest times. But hypnotism is quite another matter; it is a suspicious thing, is unscientific, humbugging quackery - is, at all events, disreputable, or it is harmful or even dangerous.

This sounds irresistibly comical to those who are acquainted with suggestion. A surprising superficiality and a remarkable psychological shortsightedness are really required to construe two different things out of a common matter. It is really immaterial in judging the nature of psychotherapy whether a somewhat larger or smaller dose of sleep is suggested. The person who is influenced psychotherapeutically is placed under a suggestive influence - i.e., his brain dynamics are used as the source of energy for dissociatively influencing all those disturbances which depend more or less on the brain, either directly or indirectly. Whether this is called hypnosis or psychotherapy is a matter of no importance. 203

For example, Professor Dubois has launched forth into an overbearing effusion of this kind in the Correspondenzblalt fur Schweizer Aerzte of February 1, 1900. This author has already been sufficiently disproved by Dr. Ringier, who proved to him that the hypnotizing practitioners actually do and teach just those things which he imagines he could teach them.

I do not for a moment dispute that there are swindlers who hypnotize, and that there are hypnotists who employ verbal suggestion unintelligently, mechanically, and without sufficient individualizing. But the same sin is met with in every branch of medicine, as is well known, and it is a mean and unworthy slander to throw the whole art over, as Dubois does, instead of dealing with the individual who offends, and to support one's self in this on such subtleties as the derivation of the word "suggestion," or on general suspicion.

I wish further to warn one not to cast about general psychological and psychopathological words, such as "will," "nervousness," "neurasthenia," "psychical," etc., in the way that Dubois and others have done.1

Dubois 2 elaborated his views in 1904 in a book. This book, which was adapted to the fashion of the moment, deserves a few words. It is smartly written, and contains the personal experience of the author in psychotherapy, as well as views which one can find, sometimes even with almost identical words, in Bernheim's book and in the former editions of this work (especially the third and fourth editions, 1895 and 1902). I ask the reader to compare them. At every opportunity the author attacks the professional hypnotist (les hypnotiseurs de profession) and hypnotism in general in an odiou3 and overbearing manner, although his whole book consists of views which are only slightly modified from those of the hypnotists. He claims, certainly, that he appeals to the "reason" and the "will" of his patients, and that he does not suppress both of these, or even turn the patients into machines devoid of will, as these wicked hypnotists do. Curious! We all say and do exactly the same thing. Not a single one of my patients nor any of the patients of my hypnotizing colleagues, is turned into our "will-less" machine. I have emphasized this for many years. Only a few somnambulists who have always been weakly have become relative and merely transitory will-less machines. These persons are used as subjects for scientific experiment, or are produced as curiosities at certain Barnum shows. And what about the "free-will" which Dubois respects so much? He claims to be a monist (using my own arguments, but without even mentioning my name!), and does not believe in the "freedom" of the will. But the most remarkable thing of all is that Dubois imagines that he only influences his patients by means of reasoning. Does he really believe this? Why should he, then, treat them personally as well? A short theoretical explanation would suffice to effect a cure. Does he really not realize that his tone, his personality, his therapeutic reputation, act as the moving and intuitive hypoconceived suggesting factors? Professor Dubois slangs hypnotism and suggestion, while in reality be actually practices suggestion from alpha to omega, only in a slightly different form. Dr. N. once attacked the wandering magnetizers, from whom he had learned to hypnotize. The late Professor Delboeuf, of Luettich, took the part of the latter, and reproached N. "for gnawing at his mother's breast, which had nourished him." I must admit that the expression was somewhat brusque. It appears to me that Dubois deserves to receive a similar reproach. Curiously enough, he does not slang the wandering-show hypnotist Krause, who pretends to produce waking suggestion, so that he does not come into contact with the law of the canton of Berne; but he reserves his displeasure for bis colleagues., who did the same as he does, honestly and long before him, even if it be under another flag. Only Bernheim finds some favor in his eyes.

1 For example, I may quote the following phrase of Dubois': "Nervousness, under which term I recognize hysteria, neurasthenia, and all related mixed forms, is a psychical disorder, an altered condition of mood." Everything thus is thrown into one bag, no matter whether it be incurable hypochondriasis or an easily curable ease, and everything is an "altered condition of mood." No more need be said.

2 Dubois, "Les Psychonevroses et leur traitement moral." (Masson, Paris: 1st edition, 1904; 2nd edition, 1905.)