SUGGESTION.
“Suggestion,” by which is meant the production of thoughts and actions on the part of the subject through some indication or hint given by the operator, is found to be analogous to dreaming. Say the authors: “For suggestion to succeed, the subject must have naturally fallen, or been artificially thrown into a state of morbid receptivity: but it is difficult to determine accurately the conditions of suggestionability. However, we may mention two. The first, the mental inertia of the subject: * * * the consciousness is completely empty: an idea is suggested, and reigns supreme over the slumbering consciousness, * * * The second is psychic hyperexcitability, the cause of the aptitude for suggestion.” “For example, we say to a patient: ‘Look, you have a bird in your apron,’ and no sooner are these simple words pronounced than she sees the bird, feels it with her fingers, and sometimes even hears it sing.” “Again, in place of speech we engage the attention of the patient, and when her gaze has become settled and obediently follows all our movements, we imitate with the hand the motion of an object which flies. Soon the subject cries: ‘Oh, what a pretty bird!’ How has a simple gesture produced so singular an effect?”
“It is admitted, however, that the hypothesis of the association of ideas only partly covers the facts of suggestion, even when stretched to include resemblances. For instance, when we charge the brain of an entranced patient with some strange idea, such as, ‘On awakening you will rob Mr. So-and-so of his handkerchief,’ and on awakening, the patient accomplishes the theft commanded, can we believe that in such a sequence there is nothing more than an image associated with an act? In point of fact, the patient has appropriated and assimilated the idea of the experimenter. She does not passively execute a strange order, but the order has passed in her consciousness from passive to active. We can go so far as to say that the patient has the will to steal. This state is complex and obscure, hitherto no one has explained it. * * * The facts of paralysis by suggestion completely upset classical psychology. The experimenter who produces them so easily knows neither what he produces nor how he does it. Take the example of a systematic anæsthesia (paralysis of sensation). We say to the subject, ‘On awakening you will not see Mr. X., who is there before us; he will have completely disappeared.’ No sooner said than done; the patient on awakening sees every one around her except Mr. X. When he speaks she does not answer his questions; if he places his hand on her shoulder she does not feel the contact; if he gets in her way, she walks straight on, and is terrified at being stopped by an invisible obstacle. * * * Here the laws of association, which do such good service in solving psychological problems, abandon us completely. Apparently they do not account for all the facts of consciousness.”