The sexual question

by Auguste Forel

(2). A well-educated, unmarried woman became so enamored of a young man, that she was consumed with passion, grew thin, and lost her appetite and sleep. Having exchanged ideas with the young man for some time, she became convinced that their two characters were not suited to each other, and that incompatibility of temper and quarrels would necessarily follow marriage. She therefore resisted with all her power and came to me to be cured of her passion by suggestion. My failure in the preceding case increased my skepticism, but I did my best to succeed; the result, however, was no better than with the actor in the preceding case. Time and separation alone gradually restored equilibrium in this lady's nervous system.

These two cases are very instructive. Suggestion can only successfully combat powerful sentiments by arousing other sentiments of sympathy which increase little by little and finally become substituted for the preceding ones. This brings us to a very difficult question.

In order to influence other persons by suggestion, it is above all things necessary to try and associate the ideas which we suggest to them with sentiments of sympathy, so as to arouse in them the impression that the object to be attained is desirable and agreeable, or at any rate that it constitutes a necessity. The woman who surrenders to the mercy of her conqueror often experiences a kind of pleasure which is associated with the passiveness of her sexual sentiments. It is the same in the male masochist.

The physician who hypnotizes is obliged to awaken sentiments of sympathy in his subject to combat with their assistance the sentiments associated with the morbid state which it is desired to suppress. This is usually free from danger when there is no natural sexual attraction between the hypnotizer and the hypnotized; when, for example, a normal man hypnotizes another man, a normal woman another woman, or an invert another invert. Otherwise there is a risk of exciting sexual sympathies difficult to eliminate afterwards, when necessary precautions have not been taken at first. These attractive sexual sensations or sentiments may affect both the hypnotizer and the hypnotized and provoke love scenes, which are fatal to success.

For example, a hysterical baroness, whose sexual desire had been excited by hypnotism, fell in love with a person named Czinsky, whose case was studied and published by Schrenck-Notzing. This baroness experienced a kind of suggested love against which her reason resisted to a certain extent, while her hypnotizer, himself amorous, lost his head. One might say in such a case that suggestion only reënforced the very human sentiments which occur in all love stories of everyday life. Between normal love and suggested love there is such an infinite number of gradations that it is impossible to fix exactly the limits which separate them.

A hypnotizer may abuse his suggestive power to exploit the love of the hypnotized. I have been consulted in a case where an old woman had hypnotized a rich young man and had so powerfully influenced him that he abandoned his family and married her. As in the case of Czinsky, the abuse was obvious. The case was even more grave, for this old woman acted only from mercenary motives; in fact, she procured young girls for her husband, so as not to lose her suggestive influence after marriage: Czinsky, on the contrary, was truly amorous.

As a general rule we may say that, when amorous intoxication is the result of intentional suggestion, the subject obeys a certain sentiment of constraint, which he may describe later on when he has succeeded in recovering himself. He feels a kind of duplication of his personality, and perceives that the excitation of his sexual desire, as well as his love, have a somewhat forced nature, against which his reason attempts to defend him. This reaction often only appears afterwards, when the sympathetic action of suggestion begins to fade.

Here again the gradations are infinite, and no absolute rules can be formulated, for if the hypnotizer is very skillful and does not let his intentions appear, the subjective sentiment of constraint may be absolutely wanting; i.e., never become conscious. If, however, the hypnotizer is clumsy and the subject a hysterical woman, love is often transformed into hatred in the latter soon afterwards, as is so often the case in these subjects, and she may afterwards be convinced by auto-suggestion that she was the object of artificial constraint or even violence, and describe imaginary or unnatural events as if they were real; while she was simply amorous after the fashion of hysterical subjects.

It is quite otherwise with cases where a hypnotizer produces in a hypnotized woman a state of deep somnambulism and does harm to her without her knowledge. Here the victim is absolutely without will, and incapable of resisting. These last cases are much more easy to decide, especially from the legal point of view; but, as far as we are now concerned, the first cases are the most important.

The amorous irradiations produced by the sexual appetite react on the latter and increase it. They awaken sentiments of reciprocal sympathy, from which results a mutual attraction similar to that of animals. Suggestive action depends on the mastery we obtain over the associated constellations of subconscious engrams, and we have already become acquainted with the phylogenetic and actual relationship which exists between sexual sensations and sensations of sympathy. The simple juxtaposition of these facts clearly shows that powerful affinities exist between suggestion and love. I use the word "affinity" advisedly, for we must not go further and regard the two things as identical. Fortunately, the majority of curable patients may be cured by the prudent awakening of a slight degree of sympathy, and by the common efforts made by the hypnotizer and the hypnotized to subdue the morbid symptoms, without anything but a certain sentiment of reciprocal friendship resulting. On the other hand two human beings may be united by sexual love, without either being able to hypnotize the other. This is especially the case when, for example, two conjoints have known each other for many years, or when two persons of higher intelligence, who are not too dependent on their sexual intercourse, meet each other.