530 A. There are many instances of the cure of morphinomania. I select the following (recorded by Dr. Marot in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, February 1893) on account of the psychological interest of the patient's own remarks.

The patient was a woman of thirty-seven, mother of five children, and subject to morphinomania since the age of thirty-one.

Always of somewhat hysterical temperament, she had been since the age of twenty-six a hysteric of the most advanced type; - violent attacks, anaesthesia of left side and of pharynx, diminution of visual field, etc.; then insistence on keeping her bed, and constant druggings with ether, chloroform, chloral, finally with injections of morphia every few hours. Exhaustion; lividity; cold sweat and hallucinations if the injection was deferred.

In 1889 Dr. Marot was asked by the patient to hypnotise her for sleeplessness. He succeeded; and next day it occurred to him to suggest to her in the trance to abstain altogether from morphia. The suggestion at once succeeded, and she refused an injection on the following day. There was great discomfort, as is usually the case, from the sudden cessation; but the patient, to her own extreme surprise, resisted all renewal of the practice.

Extracts from her private correspondence give an insight into her state of mind.

"September 21st, 1889.

"One idea dominates all others in my mind: the desire to know why I have no desire for morphia. I should be obliged indeed to any one who would tell me why! I have always liked to understand things, and it is a real source of suffering to me not to be able to get at this. It is a fixed idea, a real monomania. If any one speaks to me of morphia, I answer as if it were a thing which does not attract me; if I suffer from the want of it, I never say to myself, ' If only I had some!' No; the idea never comes to me that I could easily get some. Why is this ? I believe that if any one wished to give me any I should resist. One night I dreamt that some one had made an injection, and the sensation was so strong that I woke up with a jump and sprang out of bed, feeling my arms and legs to see if there was a mark; I thought that possibly I had had a fit of hysterics, and that a doctor had been called in and had injected me. You can't imagine how this fear distressed me till day came, when I could reassure myself.

And all day I have been troubled and restless; the very notion that such a thing could happen makes me tremble".

Now it is to be remarked here that there is practically no moral effort called for. The suggestion, whose efficacy puzzled the patient herself, operated, as she naively said, like an idée fixe. It was, in fact, an idée fixe; but one implanted in her for a good purpose, not spontaneous and hurtful.

Wetterstrand, out of fourteen cases, records eleven cures of morphinomania. In a paper in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, November 1890, he discusses the benefit of prolonged hypnosis - causing the patient to sleep for a week or more at a time - which he tried in one case. See also Voisin, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, December 1886, p. 163.

532 A. Phobies are complex emotional states in which a feeling of abject, torturing, unreflective fear predominates. The object of this unconquerable fear is some particular action, or some particular event; thus, an officer will be able to cross the barrack-yard on horseback without discomfort, but not to cross it on foot without horrid pangs and reeling gait; a medical man, every time he sends away a patient with a prescription, will fall into an intense fright lest he should by mistake have prescribed poison.1 Each profession, every walk of life, has its special phobies; and although several have received special names, as agoraphobia, claustrophobia, etc, there is an indefinitely large variety of them. Phobies sometimes appear in people who are afflicted with no other morbid symptoms. They constitute then a special disease in themselves. On the other hand, they constitute frequently but one out of many symptoms of a deeper nervous derangement, - neurasthenia. The latter class are called phobies neurasthéniques by the French authors.

The former have been called by Gélineau2 phobies essentielles,- and Freud has given to the state which is specially favourable to their evolution, - a state entirely distinct, according to him, from neurasthenia, - the name of Angstneurose. According to Hartenberg 3 these phobies cannot be cured by suggestion, as their origin is to be found in organic derangements. However this may be, it is at least certain that the great majority of the phobies which have been cured by hypnotic suggestion are clearly phobies neurastheniques, and it is most probable that the removal of the phobia will arrest the development of the neurasthenia, and contribute largely to the restoration of neural stability.

For the use of the psycho-therapeutic method in the treatment of neurasthenia see Bernheim, Hypnotisme; Suggestion; Psycho-thérapie (he expresses the opinion that inherited neurasthenia is very difficult to cure by suggestion, if not incurable); Bernheim, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, 1892, pp. 23, 225 ; von Schrenck-Notzing, Diepsychische Behandlungder Neurasthenic; Van Renterghem and Van Eeden, Psycho-thirapie, p. 162 et seq. (according to these authors even inherited neurasthenia can be cured with time, tact, and patience); Wetterstrand, Der Hypnotismus und seine Anwendung in der praktischen Medicin; Ringier, Erfolge des therapeu-tischen Hypnotismus in der Landpraxis.

In all the cases just referred to, the removal of phobies was incidental to the cure of the neurasthenia. In the following Appendices I quote some cases of the direct removal of phobies by hypnotic suggestion.

1 Cf. Bérillon, "Les Phobies Professionnelles," Revue de l'Hypnotisme, August 1894, p. 33; "Phobies et Service Militaire," Revue de l'Hypnotisme, February 1894, p. 241.

2 See observations on" Phobies Essentielles," in Gèlineau's " Peurs Maladives ou Phobies;" also Revue de l'Hypnotisme, August 1896, p. 51, and September 1898, p. 79.

3 See communications on "Névroses d'Angoisse" to the International Congresses of Psychology and Neurology at Paris, 1900.