THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SUGGESTION

        An interesting book is this in more ways than one, beginning with the title-page, for it marks a stadium in the progress, both of psychology and of medicine, that the need of such an official as an "Associate in Psychology" should have been felt and filled in the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals. It speaks well for that institution. It is interesting, too, to meet with so signal a vindication of the appointment as is afforded by the successful treatment of the extraordinary and interesting case of the Rev. Thomas Carson Hanna. This gentleman of superior endowments and accomplishments, when he came to himself after a carriage accident, was like one new born. He had clean lost all knowledge, all passion, all voluntary activity. He was bereft of every vestige or familiarity with everything, had no suspicion that the sounds of speech had any meaning, never thought of the persons about him as persons, had no consciousness of self as such, and did not look upon the external world as real. When, after a few weeks he had begun to use his hands, ho had become ambidextrous. His logical acumen retuned very early, while he was still in passional innocence, was asking the meaning of the simplest words, and wondering at the most everyday matters. The extraordinary rapidity with which he acquired and applied new knowledge, his keen sense of music and symmetry, and the significant fact that he learned English in a few weeks, and pronounced it well and correctly, confirmed Dr. Sidis in his first impression that the old personality had not been crushed to death, but had only been dissevered from conscious life, still in great measure swaying the newly-formed personality from the subconscious depths of being.

        The work is divided into three parts entitled Suggestibility, The Self, Society. The middle part occupies more than half the volume and is the centre of the author's thought. To this the chapters on suggestibility are introductory. "Suggestibility" is the Nancy word for that docility, or, if you please, that incitability, which is so exaggerated in the hypnotic trance, but of which everybody, especially an agreeable and sympathetic person, has a large share. This faculty, or state of mind, was first assigned as the main secret of the ordinary phenomenon of hypnotism as long ago as 1846 by the American itinerant lecturer Grimes. But he was not an academic person, and was naturally ignored. He proposed the word "credenciveness" as the scientific name for the incitability of which we are speaking, briefly defining it as "that conforming social propensity whose natural stimulus is an assertion," to describe all its principal effects. "Credenciveness," he says, "is the key to most of the wonderful experiments of Buchanan and Sunderland, of Braid, Hall, and Elliotson." We may add that by reducing Consciousness to the rank of a special faculty, Grimes paved the way to the modern doctrine of the subconscious mind. Modern psychology is but suffering grievously from the lack of a precise and consistent terminology. The experience of other sciences shows that the only possible basis for a universally accepted scientific terminology lies in a strict adherence to the rule that the word proposed as the scientific designation of a concept by the discoverer who first introduces that concept into science shall be adopted unless there are very solid objections to it. The word "credenciveness" is not particularly apt because it does not obviously imply a tendency to action, although it was so understood by Grimes. On the other hand, the word "suggestibility"—aside from its awkwardness in seeming to substitute "facility to be suggested" in place of "facility to receive suggestions," and aside from its implying no tendency to action, but only the calling of an idea into notice—is seriously objectionable for the reason that "suggestion" was an already accepted term of psychology, and a quite indispensable one, in a totally different sense, before it was applied to hypnotic incitation. Namely, Hartley and the English associationalists, men whose own distinguished courtesy found freedom from insolence towards all philosophers—not to speak of their scientific merits—must command the same treatment from men who really respect themselves, desired to appropriate the word "suggestion" to the calling up to the surface of consciousness of one idea by another idea associated with it. No term could be more apt; nor is it pleasing to see the terminology established by these masters hustled aside by their inferiors.

        The first part of Dr. Sidis's book, then, is concerned with the laws of credenciveness, or incitability. He argues that its general law is, "Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness." We are glad to find he uses the term "disaggregation" and not "dissociation"; for the implication of the latter term, that the phenomenon consists solely in the abrogation of habits of association of ideas, is incorrect. Both words were used by M. Pierre Janet, to whom the recognition of the importance of the matter is due. In ordinary parlance, we call it distraction of mind. For example, an artist who eats his luncheon while he paints, and in his absorption puts his pigment into his mouth, and without remarking its bad taste, yet spits it out unconsciously, exhibits a disaggregation of consciousness. It consists in the cutting of communications between two parts of the mind which are occupied with different matters. Drowsiness and slumber are conditions of extensive disaggregation.

        When we find that all the facts adduced are equally impertinent, we begin to think that, just as Dr. Sidis overstated his own position in part i., so here in part ii. he does not really mean to say that there are just two selves in every man, but only that the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind are related to one another somewhat as the two selves of a patient with double personality. But if this is the case, he has no scientifically definite and novel proposition to enunciate; for everybody has perceived that there was some degree of analogy between the two classes of phenomena, it may be somewhat closer than has been supposed; but no contribution to science will have been made until we are informed definitely in what respect the analogy is close. Although it is not a positive contribution to science, however, the array of facts in this part of the book is striking and suggestive (it we may be allowed to use this word without being understood to mean "incitive to action").

        In part iii. the author gives a slight account of some at those mental epidemics of which several French writers, beginning with Moreau, have made admirable studies. That the mob self is a subconscious self is obvious. It is quite true, too, as Dr. Sidis says, that America is peculiarly subject to epidemic mental seizures, in fact, it may be said that democracy, as contrasted with autocracy—and especially government by public opinion and popular sentiment as expressed in newspapers—is government by the irrational element of man. To discover how this can be cured, as a practical, realized result, without the ends of government being narrowed to the good of an individual or class, is our great problem. Prof. James seems to think that this part is the best. We will defer to his judgment, but certainly a great subject here remains virgin ground for a writer of power.

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