In the same work I come to the conclusion, as the result of investigation, that “the nature of abnormal suggestibility is a disaggregation of consciousness, a slit, a scar, produced in the mind that may extend wider and deeper, ending at last in a total disjunction of the waking, guiding, controlling consciousness from the reflex consciousness. . . . Normal suggestibility is of like nature,—it is a cleft in the mind, only here the cleft is not so deep, not so lasting, as it is in hypnosis or in the state of abnormal suggestibility; the split is here but momentary, evanescent, fleeting, disappearing at the very moment of its appearance.”

            We have also shown that the laws of normal and abnormal suggestibility may be stated as follows:

       “Normal suggestibility varies as indirect suggestion and inversely as direct suggestion.

       “Abnormal suggestibility varies as direct suggestion and inversely as indirect suggestion.”

             The general law of suggestibility is:

       “Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness.”

            It is on those general laws and the nature of relation of the personal consciousness to the subconscious that I have based my method of hypnoidization. In order to reach the dissociated mental states we have to lay bare the subconscious, and this can be effected by the conditions requisite for the induction of normal or abnormal suggestibility, conditions which bring about a disaggregation of consciousness. In cases, therefore, where hypnosis is not practicable and the subconscious has to be reached, we can effect a disaggregation of consciousness and thus produce an allied subconscious state by putting the patient under the conditions of normal suggestibility: fixation of attention, distraction, monotony, limitation of the voluntary movements, limitation of the field of vision, inhibition, and immediate execution.

            This is precisely what the method of hypnoidization consists in: “The patient is asked to close his eyes and keep as quiet as possible, without, however, making any special effort to put himself in such a state. He is then asked to attend to some stimulus such as reading or singing (or to the monotonous beats of a metronome). When the reading is over, the patient, with his eyes shut, is asked to repeat it and tell what comes into his mind during the reading, or during the repetition, or immediately after it. Sometimes the patient is simply asked to tell the nature of ideas and images that have entered his mind.” This should be carried out in a quiet place, and the room, if possible, should be darkened so as not to disturb the patient and bring him out of the state in which he has been put.

            Fatigue, physical and mental, especially emotional, is a favorable condition. A prolonged warm bath with relaxation is favorable. A predisposition to sleep is helpful. It is, therefore, best to make the first attempts at hypnoidization late at night, when the patient is both tired and sleepy. In most cases, darkness, quietness, repose, the monotonous buzzing of an inductorium are conditions favorable to the induction of the hypnoidal state.

            As modifications of the same method, the patient is asked to fixate his attention on some object while at the same time listening to the beats of a metronome; the patient’s eyes are then closed; he is to keep quiet, while the metronome or some other monotonous stimulus is kept on going. After some time, when his respirations and pulse are found somewhat lowered, and he declares that he thinks of nothing in particular, he is asked to concentrate his attention on a subject closely relating to the symptoms of the malady or to the submerged, subconscious states.

            The patient, again, may be asked to keep quiet, to move or change position as little as possible, and is then required to look steadily into a glass of water on a white background, with a light shining through the contents of the glass; a mechanism producing monotonous sounds is set going, and after a time, when the patient is observed to have become unusually quiet, he is asked to tell what he thinks in regard to a subject relating to his symptoms. He may be asked to write the stray ideas down, if speaking aloud disturbs the induced states favorable to the emergence of the dissociated mental states.

            In some cases it is sufficient to put the patient in a quiet condition; have his eyes shut and command him to think hard of the particular dissociated states.

            Once the hypnoidal state is induced by any of the various methods of hypnoidization, we can either attempt to follow up the history and the development of the malady, or we may chiefly work for the therapeutic effect and treat the present symptoms. It is, however, advisable from a purely practical therapeutic purpose to combine the two procedures, the cure is then effective and far more stable. When the history of the origin and development of the disease can not be traced, on account of the age or unintelligence of the patient, the therapeutic effects alone of the hypnoidal states have been utilized. The results are not as satisfactory as far as scientific information is concerned, but they are of great benefit to the patient.

            The getting access to subconscious experiences, lost to the patient’s personal consciousness makes the hypnoidal state a valuable instrument in the tracing of the origin and development of the symptoms of the psychopathic malady.

            From a practical standpoint, however, the therapeutic value of the hypnoidal state is most important. Our experiments have revealed to us the' significant fact that the hypnoidal state is the primordial rest-state; sleep is but a derivative form of rest. In many conditions of disease it is advisable to have the patient revert to a simple and primitive mode of life. Similarly, in psychopathic diseases a reversion to a simple primitive state proves to be of material help to the patient. In plunging the patient into the hypnoidal state, we have him revert to a primitive rest-state with its consequent beneficial results. The suggestibility of the state, if skillfully handled, is apt to increase the therapeutic efficacy. Relaxation of nervous strain, rest from worry, abatement of emotional excitement, are known to be of great help in the treatment of nervous troubles of the neurasthenic or of the so-called “psycho-asthenic” variety. That is what we precisely observe in the treatment of psychopathic diseases by means of the agency of the hypnoidal state, the efficacy of which is all the greater on account of the presence of the important trait of suggestibility.

            The most important fact, however, is the access gained through the hypnoidal state to the patient’s stores of subconscious reserve neuron energy, thus helping to bring about an association of disintegrated, dissociated mental systems.

            Dr. John Donley in his article “The Clinical Use of Hypnoidization” published in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology for August-September, 1908, gives the following account of the method of hypnoidization and of the hypnoidal state:

            “The treatment of that large group of disorders commonly classed as the psycho-neuroses is sufficiently arduous to warrant the assumption of a receptive mood toward any measure that may increase our efficiency. . . Such assistance, it would seem, is open to us in the hypnoidization of Dr. Boris Sidis.

            “Hypnoidization has two things to recommend it, facility of induction and successful results. The technique is simple, there need be no mention of hypnosis, and hence no stirring up of apprehension in the mind of even the most timorous patient; while the effects produced are comparable, in many respects at least, with those brought about through the medium of complete hypnosis. It is not, and perhaps cannot be maintained that in hypnoidization we possess a complete substitute for hypnosis; but so far as a limited experience (some thirty cases) allows of our drawing any conclusions we feel that hypnoidization is quite worthy of more attention and study than it has hitherto received.

            “. . . Many variations of this particular procedure are of course possible, and the one which the writer has found quite generally useful is the following: The patient is first placed at ease by a few minutes’ conversation, during which he is instructed regarding what is about to be done. He is then requested to lie upon the couch, the head of which has been placed close to a faradic wall plate. With his eyes closed he is directed to listen to the monotonous vibration of the ribbon rheotome, and to concentrate attention either upon nothing at all or upon the particular idea or group of ideas or images suggested to him by the physician. At the beginning of the experiment the patient may be somewhat tense and ill at ease, but a few minutes suffice to render him relaxed and to place him in the mental state to which Sidis has given the name ‘hypnoidal.’ It is during the continuance of this state that one may obtain information valuable for diagnosis, and give suggestions useful for therapeusis.

            “. . . During a psychotherapeutic conversation one will often notice a certain attitude of criticism and resistance upon the part of a patient, whereas if the same patient be placed in the hypnoidal state, there is voluntary conversation with the physician, yet a greater readiness to give credence to his remarks. For the purpose of psychotherapy it is often useful to place the patient in a condition of hypnoidization during which a greater influence may possibly be exerted upon subconscious mental processes. There is then a more direct avenue of approach to those subconscious factors that are so potent in determining and influencing self-conscious attitudes; for it has seemed to me that the physical and mental relaxation that characterize the hypnoidal state are precisely the conditions requisite for imprinting ideas upon the minds of neurotic patients. Whether and how far this is true will be determined by a wider experience with different types of patients. Some have been particularly receptive in hypnoidization, which they were not in the waking state; others have been very much less so.

            “The beneficial effects of hypnoidization are to be seen not alone in those cases where submerged, forgotten memories and emotions are operative in the production of mental disaggregation, but also in those numerous instances where the experience causing the obsessive idea or emotion is well known to the upper consciousness.

            “. . . The mechanism at work during hypnoidization may be assumed to be that of mental synthesis into the self-conscious personality of the individual. With the production of this synthesis and as a consequence of it there is a change of emotional tone. This, I believe, is the most important factor in the case. A mental system which remains automatic and extra-voluntary carries with it a disturbing emotional reaction. In cases I and II for example the recurrence of the obsessive state was not only accompanied, but preceded and followed by a most pronounced emotion of fear, with all of its psychological manifestations. As a result of this the patients were kept in a state of more or less constant psychological disintegration. They were unable to master their emotions.

            “In hypnoidal states they were made to reproduce their obsessive thoughts and images and then to describe them in words. When this had been accomplished and they had received further assurance and persuasion from the experimenter, although the purely intellectual content of their obsessions remained known to them, the insistent automatic character and disturbing emotional factors had disappeared. In this metamorphosis of emotional reaction we may observe one of the most interesting and useful attributes of the hypnoidal state.”

            Dr. Donley gives then a series of cases which he treated successfully from psychognostic and psychotherapeutic standpoints. The reader is referred to the original article.

            I may also refer to Dr. Mitchell's presidential address before the English Psycho-Medical Society on January 26, 1911, on “The Hypnoidal State of Sidis,” published in the Transaction of the Psycho-Medical Society, and republished in my “Symptomatology.” “The value of hypnoidization,” says Dr. Mitchell, “in the resurrection of dissociated memories is that which is perhaps best established. And this applies not only to the restoration of the forgotten experiences of ordinary amnesia, but to the recovery of dissociated memories that are of pathogenic significance. . . Sidis himself has insistently taught that the reassociation of dissociated complexes effects a cure of psychopathic disease. . . . My own experience, so far as it goes tends to corroborate in every respect the claims put forward by Sidis. . . .”

            While in the hypnoidal state the patient hovers between the conscious and the subconscious, somewhat in the same way as in the half-drowsy condition one hovers between wakefulness and sleep. The patient keeps on fluctuating from moment to moment, now falling more deeply into a subconscious condition in which outlived experiences are easily aroused, and again rising to the level of the waking state. Experiences long submerged and forgotten rise to the full light of consciousness. They come in bits, in chips, in fragments, which may gradually coalesce and form a connected series of interrelated systems of experiences apparently long dead and buried. The resurrected experiences then stand out clear and distinct in the patient’s mind. The recognition is fresh, vivid, and instinct with life, as if the experiences have occurred the day before.

            It cannot be insisted too much that the hypnoidal state is not a light hypnosis. The hypnoidal state is a sleep state. The hypnoidal state is the anabolic state of repose characteristic of primitive life.

            The hypnoidal state is an intermediary state between waking and sleep. Subwaking is an appropriate descriptive term of the character of the hypnoidal state. The subwaking hypnoidal state, like sleep and hypnosis, may be of various depth and duration; it may range from the fully waking consciousness and again may closely approach and even merge into sleep or hypnosis. The same patient may at various times reach different levels, and hence subconscious experiences which are inaccessible at one time may become revealed at some subsequent time, when the patient happens to go into a deeper hypnoidal state.

            On account of the instability of the hypnoidal state, and because of the continuous fluctuation and variation of its depth, the subconscious dissociated experiences come up in bits and scraps, and often may lack the sense of familiarity and recognition. The patient often loses the train of subconscious associations; there is a constant struggle to maintain this highly unstable hypnoidal state, and one has again and again to return to the same subconscious train started into activity for a brief interval of time. One must pick his way among streams of disturbing associations before the dissociated subconscious experiences can be synthesized into a whole, reproducing representatively the original experience that has given rise to the whole train of symptoms.

            The hypnoidal state may sometimes reproduce the original experience which, at first struggling up in a broken, distorted form and finally becoming synthesized, gives rise to a full attack. The symptoms of the malady turn out to be portions, bits, and chips of past experiences which have become dissociated, giving rise to a disaggregated subconsciousness. The method of hypnoidization and the hypnoidal states induced by it enable us to trace the history and etiology of the symptoms, and also to effect a synthesis and a cure.

            For many years my investigations of the hypnoidal state were carried out on subjects and patients, adults and children. The work was entirely limited to the study of such states as found in man. Having found that during the hypnoidal state the condition of mental plasticity is quite pronounced for therapeutic purposes, and having effected many cures of severe psychopathic maladies, ranging throughout the whole domain of so-called hysterical affections, neurasthenia, obsessions, drug habits, especially alcoholic ones, the hypnoidal state has become, in my practice, quite an important therapeutic agent. Lately, others have obtained excellent results with the hypnoidal state in their treatment of various functional, psychopathic maladies.

            The therapeutic employment of the hypnoidal state may be accomplished in a physiological mode or in a purely psychological way. The hypnoidal state may be utilized for the induction of an intermediate sleep state of repose, in accord with its proper function in the early history of animal life when rest was requisite for repair of organ and function. The psychological mode is the utilization of the hypnoidal state for the direct and indirect mental modification of the psychopathic mental systems. The alternation of the two forms of hypnoidal treatment is sometimes advisable. In a number of cases the repose hypnoidal treatment, if supplemented by other methods, is quite effective.

            I have pointed out that the conditions of abnormal suggestibility are: (1) Fixation of attention; (2) monotony; (3) limitation of voluntary movements; (4) limitation of the field of consciousness; (5) inhibition.

            Patients, therefore, who are so situated as not to comply with the conditions of abnormal suggestibility are difficult to hypnotize. Patients whose attention is weak, fluctuating and wandering, who cannot sustain any interest in a subject without changing it immediately; patients with diffused attention, such as idiots, imbeciles, are not favorable subjects for hypnotization. On the other hand, patients whose personal attention is fixed on systematized delusions, fixed ideas, imperative concepts or on any other well-organized system of ideas permeated by a strong emotion, patients who are intensely conscious of their troubles and pay minute attention to the slightest symptoms so that their attention is confined to a narrow, limited region, their ideas and concepts are fixed, their mental and emotional activities run in well-defined grooves which resist efforts at variations,—such patients are hard to put into a hypnotic state. The whole mental make-up has, in such patients, not only lost its plasticity, but is militantly aggressive, so to say, against all changes, the dominant mental systems having gained undue control over the personal consciousness of the individual. The attention is already bound in one definite direction, in the direction of the predominant systems which admit of no inhibition. Thus free fixation of attention and voluntary inhibition, the two important conditions requisite for abnormal suggestibility, are here at a disadvantage or completely absent.

            Patients with a shifting attention, as well as patients with a more or less rigidly fixed attention, are usually poor hypnotic subjects and are specially benefited by the hypnoidal state. Patients with insistent moods of a depressing character, with a fixed tendency to worry, to inspect the minutiae of feelings, hovering in the background of consciousness; patients who take delight in self-analysis, in watching their symptoms, who never can dilate enough on the various delicate shades of their feelings and experiences; patients whose focal consciousness seems always to hover with a feeling of luxury on the periphery of mental life,—such patients are often the despair of the physician who should avail himself of the hypnoidal state, specially adapted for such cases. The hypnoidal state may not be striking and sensational in its manifestations, but it is a powerful instrument in Psychopathology and Psychotherapeutics.

Boris Menu     Contents     Next