Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/788

768 they have eliminated the effects of suggestion because they make their experiments in their so-called cataleptic and lethargic stages. They say, "These (stages) are unconscious stages of the ' grand hypnose/ stages in which the condition of the senses and intelligence renders the subject a perfect stranger to what is going on around him." Nothing could better illustrate the imperfection of their method of research, for, as we have seen, some knowledge of what is going on is retained in all but the most exceptional cases.

The number of non-hysterical persons hypnotized by Liébault, Bernheim, and Forel is very great. Yet not one of these observers has ever been able to obtain the results of the Paris school except through the use of suggestion.

The use of a bright light or the simple opening of the lids to produce catalepsy, and the friction of the head to produce somnambulism, have been found absolutely unnecessary by these observers, no matter whether the patient has been hypnotized by Braid's method or by the suggestive method. As we have already seen, all that is necessary to produce catalepsy is to lift the arm or affirm the existence of rigidity. If the sleep be profound enough, the automatic movements which usually occur in somnambulism can be provoked by simple suggestion, and, if the sleep he not sufficiently deep, no amount of friction of the head unaided by suggestion will produce somnambulism.

We may safely conclude, therefore, that in reality the "grades of the hypnotic series" do not exist as such. There is no sharp line of demarkation between the so-called lethargic, cataleptic, and somnambulistic stages. The existence of catalepsy and somnambulism is dependent entirely upon the degree of sleep and the nature of the suggestion. I do not mean to say that the Charcot school have described what they have not seen, but it seems probable that they have misinterpreted what they have observed, and have not taken into account the influence of suggestion in producing the conditions which they hold to be spontaneous. That they have succeeded by repeated hypnotization and either intentional or unintentional suggestion in reproducing a condition in their subject close akin to a neurosis I am fully convinced; but I hold that a state obtained in this way should not be taken as a basis for a description of hypnotism.

If the thirteen cases of the "grand hypnose" at the Salpêtrière were the only examples known of the effects of hypnotism, there might be some justification for looking upon them as typical examples; but to do this in the face of many thousand cases of hypnotism induced in non-hysterical persons and presenting uniform characteristics of a widely different nature, seems to be a one-sided position to say the least. I have no desire to detract from