Suggestion and Autosuggestion

Front matter

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PART ONE Spontaneous Suggestion Wuy Do WE IGNORE AUTOSUGGESTION ?

TYPICAL EXAMPLES . ; : a

REPRESENTATIVE SUGGESTIONS (IMAGES, JUDGMENTS, HALLUCINATIONS, HALLU- CINATION BY COMPROMISE AND BY TRANSFER) .

AFFECTIVE SUGGESTIONS (SENSATIONS, EMOTIONS, THE PERIPHERAL THEORY OF EMOTION) . : : 3

AFFECTIVE SUGGESTIONS, continued (an: TIMENTS, TENDENCIES, PASSIONS) .

ACTIVE OR MOTOR SUGGESTIONS (HABITS, MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA; SAYINGS AND DOINGS, HAPPENINGS) .« ; ;

MoToR SUGGESTIONS, continued (FUNC- TIONAL AND ORGANIC MODIFICATIONS, MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS, CURES) . :

CONDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS i i ; THE ACTION OF SLEEP : A ‘ :

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONCLU- SIONS (THE LAWS OF SUGGESTION) :

37 41

104 121 128

VIIL.

VIG.

CONTENTS

PART TWO Reflective Suggestion THE LAW OF REVERSED EFFORT

THE OUTCROPPING OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS : RELAXATION . . ;

EDUCATION OF THE OUTCROPPING : CoL- LECTEDNESS

A PSYCHOLOGICAL EQUIVALENT FOR AT- TENTION : CONTENTION . A x

GENERAL RULES FOR THE PRACTICE OF AUTOSUGGESTION A F

EXAMPLES AND SPECIAL RULES.

AUTOSUGGESTION AND MORAL ENERGY

PART THREE Induced Suggestion AUTONOMY OF THE SUBJECT : PRELIMINARY EXERCISES

Covuk’s PRACTICE

CONCRETE RESULTS (SUGGESTION AND PSYCHOANALYSIS) . é 3

ACCEPTIVITY AND SUGGESTIBILITY

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY OF HYPNosIS f

SUGGESTION IN THE EDUCATION OF CHIL- DREN :

GENERAL METHODS OF APPLICATION CONCLUSION : SUGGESTION AND THE WILL GLOSSARY

INDEX i A °

143 151 160 165 173

182 204 237

237 248 259

309 320 326 334 337

INTRODUCTION WHAT IS SUGGESTION?

WHEN we speak of suggestion, our first difficulty is to come to an agreement as to the meaning of the term. Furthermore, questions of words are at the same time questions of things; a definition is a theory.

It may be true that the meaning of the term suggestion is still somewhat vague; but this does not give anyone the right to formulate a purely arbitrary definition, haphazard. For by now, in the language universally accepted by science, the word has come to be applied to precise and well-known facts, and a definition which should fail to take these facts into the reckoning would be inadmissible.

We have to ask whether all the facts, or a very large majority of them, exhibit a common specific character. If this be so, then wherever such a character is encountered, we are entitled to speak of suggestion.

Among the phenomena universally recognized as belonging to the domain of suggestion, two groups of very different type have drawn the attention of various ,observers, some persons inclining especially to the study of one group, and others to the study of the other. We have to ascertain which of these two groups is the most characteristic, and which we should therefore choose in drawing up our definition of suggestion.

A subject is hypnotized, and the operator orders him to look at an imaginary bird: the subject has the suggested hallucination. Or, on the other hand, a doctor may cure his patient by a simple affirmation of cure.— In each of these experiments, two phases can be distinguished:

1. An idea,’ proposed or imposed by the operator, is accepted by the mind of the subject.

2. This idea undergoes transformation into an action, so that the object of the idea (in the instances given, the hallucination or the cure) is realized.

These two phases recur in all the phenomena which it is generally.agreed to regard as suggestion. But which of the two is essentially and truly characteristic? Here comes the divergence of opinion,

Public opinion gives its verdict for the first phase. Suggestion, for public opinion, has as a fundamental requirement two terms, an operator and a subject. It consists in the forcible control of the comparatively feeble will of the subject by the comparatively powerful will of the operator.

The domination will be facilitated by a peculiar state known as hypnosis, and it is through the combined influence of domination and hypnosis that we arrive at the second phase, the realization of the idea.

These strange realizations, so astounding in their aeeuracy, which hypnotism has revealed to us, could not (it is contended) be brought about in default of certain peculiar conditions of which the leading condition is the presence of a suggester.

*The term “idea” will be used here in the widest sense of

“representation,” and will denote the image as well as the concept,

The theory just expounded is invalidated by the facts.

To settle the question decisively let us ask what are the profoundest changes which the suggestion of an operator can produce in a hypnotized subject, and let us see whether an isolated subject can, unaided, produce similar changes in himself.

To clear up this point we may consult one among the practitioners who have done most to widen “‘the frontiers of hypnosis,’? Bonjour of Lausanne. Let us examine the maximum result he has secured.’

A matter of outstanding interest is the regulation of childbirth by hypnotie suggestion :

‘¢ T wished to ascertain what part the brain could play in the production of childbirth. Various theories have been propounded on this subject, but none of them take account of the action of the nervous system. Why is a child born on any particular day instead of on the following day? Why do deliveries take place more frequently by night than by day? I have advanced a theory which lays stress on the accentuation of internal sensations during sleep ; the discharge of the nervous and muscular mechanism which leads to the delivery is analogous, in my opinion, to what we see in dreams. During sleep, some trifling sensation from the periphery (in the case now under consideration, from the uterus) or from the brain (dream) is exaggerated by the brain and sets at work the automatic centres in the medulla, which arouse the uterus to contraction. If my theory

were sound, it should be possible, I held, to establish its truth by the use of hypnotism.

‘¢ Professor Rapin, who was at this time chief of the maternity hospital and to whom I had spoken of the matter, begged me to make the experiment in his wards. He selected a young woman whose confinement was due three weeks later. This was on a Tuesday, and I proposed to arrange for the successful fulfilment of the experiment on Friday. There were, therefore, but three days for preparation.

““ Nevertheless I felt sure that the desired result would be secured, for my observations had absolutely convinced me of the part played by the brain in determining the time of delivery.

‘“T suggested to the young woman that she should fall asleep on the Thursday at two o’clock, that the labour should begin during the night of Thursday-Friday. IT told her that I should come at seven o’clock in the morning of Friday and that the child would be born at noon.

‘On Thursday at four in the afternoon I went to the maternity hospital. The patient had fallen into a profound sleep at five minutes past two, though her companions had vainly endeavoured to prevent her. I again told her how I had regulated the course of events, and left her with an order that she should no longer hear any voices except those of Professor Rapin and his assistant.

“‘The following day I did not reach the hospital until half-past nine instead of seven o’clock, this putting things back by two and a half hours. The woman told me that throughout the night she had been aware of the sensations I had suggested. The obstetric assistant declared that labour had not yet begun, and my own examination confirmed this statement. But I was convinced of the reality of the woman’s own sensations. They were the outcome of suggestion, and I could increase them at will. This is what actually happened. After suggestions had been continued for a quarter of an hour, the neuromuscular machinery was at work, and by the time when Professor Rapin arrived at eleven I was satisfied that my experiment was succeeding. He asked me to demonstrate the case to the students. I had not expected this complication, but I knew that nothing could now interfere with the successful issue, and I agreed. After the clinical lecture, Professor Rapin and I went down into the town, he, convinced that the child would not be born for three or four weeks, and I myself satisfied that all the phenomena of impending delivery corresponded to what I had desired to produce by suggestion. I had hardly finished lunch when I was summoned to the hospital. By half-past three labour was over, and I reawakened the young woman, who till then was not aware that her baby had been born.’’’

But the chief importance of Bonjour’s work is that he has clearly shown the power of suggestion in organic disease, whereas Bernheim believed that suggestion was solely efficacious in functional disorders.

Bonjour studied the part played by suggestion in the curing of warts. As the result of numerous observations he came to the conclusion that in about half the cases warts can be cured by a single sitting in which suggestion is practised for two minutes.

The cure of a wart is a trifling matter, but a little thing may have weighty implications. The definite proof

that suggestive treatment can be efficacious in disease that is not purely functional was a discovery of considerable importance.

Bonjour passed on to study the suggestive treatment of other organic maladies. For instance, one of his patients was suffering from a corneal ulcer which, had it proved intractable, would have caused blindness, It was completely cured under hypnotic treatment.’

Modifications in an important and complicated mechanism like the mechanism of childbirth, and, on the other hand, organic modifications—here we find the maximum of which we were in search. Now if an isolated subject, without hypnotism and in the absence of a suggester, can present analogous phenomena, if, that is to say, the subject’s own thought can in certain instances bring about similar modifications, we shall be obliged to conclude that the essential and characteristic element in the process of suggestion is the second phase (the transformation of the idea into action) and not the first phase (the acceptance of the idea suggested by another).

That this is actually so, the reader will learn from the facts analyzed in the following pages.

He will see how the idea of an organic modification ean produce that modification in the individual who thinks the idea. He will see that this action of the idea may be more powerful and more widespread in an isolated subject than in a hypnotized subject, and that autosuggestion is really the prototype of all suggestion.

"Cf. the cases reported by Auguste Forel in his Hypnotism, English translation by H. W. Armit, Rebman, London, 1906. Among other cases, this author records one of strabismus and hemeralopia due to organic trouble, in which great improvement followed upon suggestive treatment.

The conclusion must therefore be drawn that the presence of a suggester is not essential to suggestion ; it is enough to have a subject. In other words, suggestion cannot be defined as a phenomenon of transference wherein the starting-point is the consciousness of the operator and the terminus the consciousness of the subject. It must be defined as a work which proceeds wholly within the subject. If we do not allow ourselves to be repelled by barbarisms, we may find it convenient to say that suggestion is not an ‘‘inter-individual’’ phenomenon but an ‘‘intra-individual’’ phenomenon. Once for all, we must distinguish between the idea of suggestion and the idea of submission, of dependence upon another’s will. We must not confound suggestion with subjection.

We have now to examine an objection which is well stated by Binet in the beginning of his book La suggesttbilité (Paris, 1900). He writes as follows:

‘“‘We must obviously regard as erroneous the opinion of many investigators who look upon suggestion as an ‘idea which undergoes transformation into an action.’ On this theory, suggestion would be confounded with the association of ideas and with mental phenomena in general. The term would be almost meaningless, for the transformation of an idea into an action is a psychological phenomenon which manifests itself whenever an idea becomes sufficiently powerful. In the narrower signifieation of the term, in what we may call its technical meaning, suggestion is a moral pressure exercised by one person on another. The pressure is moral, by which we mean that it is not a purely physical operation, but an influence which acts through ideas, through the instrumentality of concepts, emotions, and volitions. In most cases, the spoken word is the means by which this influence is conveyed, and a definite command furnishes the best example of the kind.’’

In a word, for Binet the first phase of the abovedescribed process is the characteristic phenomenon, whereas for us the second phase is the essential one.

The chief reason why Binet holds the view he does, is that to define suggestion as ‘‘an idea which undergoes transformation into an action’’ makes the signification of the term too wide. The word is thereby applied to a great number of well-known facts for which no new name is required.

Binet’s criticism is well founded, but the definition which he proposes is open to the same objection, and perhaps to a still greater degree. He considers that a definite command is the typical suggestion. A few pages further on, in conformity with this view, he treats as absolutely identical the words ‘‘suggestibility’’ and ‘*obedience.’’

The truth is that this definition, ‘‘Suggestion is an idea which undergoes transformation into an action,”’ is erroneous because it is incomplete. We do not need to supply an entirely new definition, but to add what is lacking.

It will suffice to appeal to a characteristic which is plainly manifest in the simplest phenomena of suggestion. The characteristic in question is that the realization of the idea is brought about by subconscious activity, is effected without the subject’s being aware of it. The idea of cure is proposed to his mind, and the cure is realized without his knowing how. An action is suggested to the subject during induced sleep, and he is told that the action is to be performed some hours later. The action duly takes place, sometimes without any consciousness on the part of the subject. More frequently, however, he knows that he is performing the action but is unaware of the true motive. In like manner, in the case of childbirth recorded by Bonjour, the extensive work which culminated in the realization of the idea went on outside the subject’s consciousness. He only became aware of the result after everything was over and when informed of the fact by others, In the case of autosuggestion, it is precisely this unawareness which enables us to distinguish the phenomenon from an ordinary act of volition, from one wherein the subject realizes his idea through conscious effort and while uninterruptedly supervising the work of performance.

Thus suggestion may be briefly defined as the subconscious realization of an idea. ;

In addition to the reasons already given, the foregoing definition of suggestion is useful on theoretical grounds.

The mastery of one will by another, the act of domination with which some wish to identify suggestion, is far from being a simple psychological phenomenon, an instance of the working of a single law. It is the resultant of numerous causes, known or unknown, and extremely complex. The first of these causes is the “‘nergsonal influence’’ of the operator. Next, on the part of the subject, we have the ‘‘affective rapport’’ between the subject and the operator. This relationship may be one of love; it may be one of fear; it may be one wherein love and fear are variously mingled.

On the other hand, if suggestion be defined as we propose, its working becomes subordinated to a psychological law which is comparatively simple, and whose principle is well known even though all its applications may not be familiar. This law is the one revealed by experiments with Chevreul’s pendulum," the law in accordance with which the idea tends to realize itself spontaneously. Henceforward suggestion, acting in accordance with a simple law, can be looked upon as a ‘¢foree’’ in the scientific sense of this word. Suggestion is the putting into operation, by ourselves or by another, of the ideoreflex power which exists in us all. (See below, Part ITI, Chapter IT.)

No longer, then, need we look upon suggestion as indieating impotence and inferiority on the part of the subject. In essence, it is a power which, by accident and in special cases, may be used against us.

Tt was in such instances that suggestion was first seen at work. In like manner, electricity was first seen at work in the form of lightning, before man had learned to turn its powers to account as an illuminant or as a means of transport. The task before us now is to make a good use of suggestion, considering it as one of the natural forces, and looking upon it, not as a power for dominating others, but as an instrument for self-mastery.

What has been written above shows that suggestion exhibits itself under numerous forms. Hence, classification is necessary.

The first thought which arises in this connection is to distinguish between autosuggestion and heterosugges-

1M. E. Chevreul, De la baguette divinatcire, du pendule dit explorateur et des tables tournantes, Paris, 1854.

tion, according as the ideoreflex power has been put into operation by ourselves or by some one else.

There need not ke any essential difference between the working of these two sorts of suggestion, just as there is no essential difference in the growth of a plant when I plant it and when the gardener plants it. But the distinction is none the less important, seeing that I shall have to invoke the gardener’s aid in so far as I am myself ignorant of gardening.

But in respect of autosuggestions we may make a distinction that is perhaps even more important from the theoretical outlook. As we shall learn, there is a psychological condition prerequisite to all autosuggestion. This is that the idea should have a notable intensity, an intensity which is mainly the outcome of attention. An idea upon which attention is peculiarly concentrated, is an idea which tends to realize itself.

We shall find, therefore, in the psychology of attention, a principle for the classification of autosuggestions. Ribot rightly distinguishes between spontaneous attention and voluntary attention. The former, the only variety, or almost the only variety, of attention in the lower animals, in savages, and-in young children, is directed towards everything which interests us, towards everything which helps or hinders us in our aims. The latter presupposes reflection and conscious effort. Spontaneous attention is displayed by us when our eye is caught by a striking colour. We show voluntary attention when we deliberately set ourselves to solve a problem.

In like manner, we shall distinguish among autosuggestions, spontaneous suggestion, and reflective or voluntary suggestion, according as the preliminary act of attention has been spontaneous on the one hand or voluntary on the other. This distinction is comparable to that between wild plants and cultivated plants.

We have, therefore, three kinds of suggestion :

1. spontaneous suggestion 2. reflective suggestion * 3. induced suggestion = heterosuggestion

== autosuggestion

We shall devote ourselves to the study of all of these. The education of the ideoreflex power, its training by oneself or by others, will be considered in the second and third parts. We shall be chiefly concerned with this education, for our outlook in the present volume is mainly practical. Part I may be considered as an indispensabie introduction to Parts IT and ITI.

But before entering into the heart of the subject, let us briefly complete the definition of suggestion given above by showing what are the relationships between the narrower sense in which we employ this term in psychology, and the wider sense wherein it is used in current speech.

Etymologically, to suggest signifies, to bring in surreptitiously, to bring in from beneath. In the wider sense, suggestion implies the surreptitious appearance of sentiments, ideas, actions, in a word of all the modifications that occur in our consciousness. The process resembles that by which fresh air enters a room unnoticed beneath a closed door. A thing is suggested to us when it enters

*The reader will learn later (Part II, Chapter 1) why it is better to speak of reflective suggestion rather than of voluntary suggestion, a our consciousress without conscious effort on our part and sometimes in defiance of our will. It takes its rise in the work of our unconscious or subconscious self.

In this wider signification, we may say that a picture suggests to us a sentiment or a memory. We feel that the picture is the cause, the ‘‘occasional cause’’ as Malebranche would have said, of the memory or the sentiment. But the deeper cause is to be found in unconscious or subconscious work whose existence we can merely suspect. Something has been stirred in the depths of our personality. Thus, suggested states are contrasted with states to the production of which our will has contributed. They are effects whereof we neither see nor know the cause; they are like springs welling forth from the ground.

To help us to pass from this wider sense to the narrower sense of the word, let us now make the following hypothesis. At a higher level than the spring, a river has become engulfed beneath the soil as happens to ceriain streams in the Jura district. We realize that the spring is the same stream coming to light once mere after flowing underground. A leaf which falls into the stream just as it is about to disappear, or one which we deliberately throw into the stream, will emerge at the spring, after it has been faithfully transported by the hidden stream through a region where no one could seize it in passing.

Thus an idea which has been introduced into the mind, or one which we have ourselves voluntarily introduced, will produce its effect as the sequel of subconscious activities and at the close of a shorter or longer period.

That is what is meant by suggestion as we understand it, in the technical sense of the term. Between this technical sense and the wider sense given to the word in everyday speech there is a difference analogous to that which exists between ‘‘force’’ in common parlance, and “‘force’’ as understood by physicists. There is no radical difference between the latter and the former, but in the technical use of the term we have less extension and greater precision.

It is well that this should be so, and that a word, when it passes from current use into technical use, should remain faithful to its derivation and to the genius of language.

Chapter One Why Do We Ignore Autosuggestion ?

A KNOWLEDGE of spontaneous suggestion is the necessary foundation for all reflective suggestion. We can resist or correct nature only in proportion as we are able to make a stand against nature by the use of nature’s own weapons; in a word, by imitating nature. And we can only imitate nature in so far as we know her. Now autosuggestion, in its spontaneous form, is a natural phenomenon of our mental life, as natural as the phenomenon termed emotion, or the phenomenon termed idea. Moreover, the former phenomenon occurs just as frequently as either of the two latter. These statements are true although we do not play upon words, although we refrain from extending the significance of the term suggestion until it comes to denote (as in the usage of some writers) emotion and the association of ideas. For our part, we have been careful at the outset to restrict its meaning, and we shall sedulously avoid using it in any wider sense.

But if autosuggestion be a phenomenon of everyday experience, and if it be one which goes on within us, why is it so often overlooked, and why does its discovery come with the force of a revelation? There are numerous reasons.

1. In the first place, let the reader recall the definition of suggestion. He will remember that suggestion is a phenomenon exhibiting three phases:

First phase, the idea of a modification ;

Second phase, the work of realization, performed unconsciously as far as the actual ego is concerned;

Third phase, the appearance of the modification that has been thought.

Now the second phase oceurs without our being aware of it. Here, then, we have a causal chain whose two ends are within our grasp, but whose middle eludes us. Not without a certain amount of reflection can we convince ourselves that the ends we hold belong to the same chain.

2. On the other hand, this reflection is, from the nature of the case, absent from our habitual suggestions; for these are, above all, spontaneous phenomena. Examples to be subsequently given will make the reader understand more clearly the extent to which suggestion, in its natural form, is free from conscious effort. But inasmuch as we have said that an act of spontaneous attention is the starting-point of spontaneous suggestion, it will suffice for the moment if the reader will bear in mind how little such an act, which takes place without eonscious effort, is likely to leave deep traces in the memory, or to arouse, retrospectively, reflection. Doubtless the object which attraets my spontaneous attention, the light which dazzles me, the melody which fascinates me, are graven in my memory with an intensity proportional to the keenness of my attention. But the act of perception, the mechanism of my awakening attention— what trace will that have left? TI was absorbed in the aet of contemplation. Like Condillae’s statue, which had become ‘‘the scent of a rose,’’* I was for the moment

*Condillac, Traité des sensations, Amsterdam, Paris, and London, 1754.

WHY IGNORE AUTOSUGGESTION? 39 nothing more than the light or the melody. The perceiving subject had vanished before the intensity of the perceived object, and some difficulty is experienced in observing what was passing at the moment in the subject. Thus the second phase of suggestion eludes consciousness, while the first phase eludes observation.

3. There is an additional reason for our ignorance. Autosuggestion can operate upon us with incalculable power. Now if we permit this force to work spontaneously, in default of rational guidance, disastrous consequences may ensue, and do in fact often ensue. A large number of illnesses arise from this cause alone. Even in the case of morbid phenomena whose cause is obviously physical, it frequently happens among persons (and they form the enormous majority) who do not understand the mechanism of spontaneous suggestion, that this foree considerably aggravates the malady. But if by our own insight or with the help of others we discover that we have been the architects of our own sufferings, we are extremely loath to admit so humiliating a truth. In fact we refuse to admit it, and directly the discovery presses upon our consciousness, there ensues what psychoanalysts have termed repression, the phenomenon whereby we are induced to forget the very reasons which have led us to the dreaded conclusion. This foolish vanity is far from being exceptional. Those who protest most energetically that they know naught of it, are often most completely enthralled by it, and their protests are nothing more than one of the numerous artifices which the censor employs to fool the consciousness. The same remark applies to the protests of persons who declare that they have never been the victims of unfortunate autosuggestions. We have all suffered in this way, and especially those who regard themselves as immune.

These three reasons suffice to explain why we have remained so completely ignorant of phenomena which concern us so deeply. In ultimate analysis, every one of these reasons proves to be a manifestation of the activity of the ‘‘subconscious’’ or the ‘‘unconscious.’’ Every one of them is a manifestation of the mental activity which goes on in us without our being aware of it. They are part of the furniture of that back shop of the mind; they belong to that life which goes on in the wings instead of on the stage; they are part of that world filled with a strangely vigorous activity, the world in which thought and action continue during sleep. The life of this underworld controls us unceasingly. It leads us at hazard, so long as we lack the clues. But it discloses to us good roads—as soon as we know them well enough to choose our way. Such is the knowledge we hope to acquire in the course of the following pages.

Chapter Two Typical Examples

Berore classifying the numerous examples by which we propose to demonstrate the frequency and the diversity of spontaneous autosuggestions, we shall in the first instance, apart from all classification, give a few examples which will best enable the reader to understand the working of suggestion and will help him to realize its leading characteristics. ;

At the outset let us consider the well-known phenomenon of fascination, where the attention is so completely captured by an object that the person concerned continually returns to it in spite of himself. In certain neuropathie subjects, fascination displays itself in an aggravated form. But normal persons can grasp what we mean by fascination when they think of the attraction caused by a luminous point. A still better example is the auditory fascination exercised by a door banging repeatedly during the night, so that we cannot help listening for the recurrence of the sound. We cock our ears as we wait for its coming; and we curse the door that keeps us awake, not so much by the intensity of the noise as by the fact that we are continually on the alert.’

What has happened? The first thing is the working

1This example and other analogous ones have been ably analyzed by Paul Souriau of Nancy University. Cf. La suggestion dans l’art, Alcan, Paris.

of spontaneous attention. The isolated noise, breaking the silence of the night, naturally attracts the ear. Then, our attention recurring again and again to this noise, we imagine that it is impossible for us to refrain from attending. Next, the idea materializes (here we have suggestion at work), and in fact we are no longer able to withdraw the attention. We have spontaneously suggested our own impotence.