The problems of hypnotism and suggestion are too old to permit the mere mention of a few books, and are too new to permit the interpretation of the enormous literature. In my “Manual for Examining Judges,” I have already indicated the relation of the subject to criminal law, and the proper attitude of criminalists to it. Here we have only to bear in mind the problem of characteristic suggestion; the influence of the judge on the witnesses, the witnesses upon each other, the conditions upon the witnesses. And this influence, not through persuasion, imagination, citation, but through those still unexplained remote effects which may be best compared with “determining.” Suggestion is as widespread as language. We receive suggestions through the stories of friends, through the examples of strangers, through our physical condition, through our food, through our small and large experiences. Our simplest actions may be due to suggestion and the whole world may appear subject to the suggestion of a single individual. As Emerson says somewhere, nature carries out a task by creating a genius for its accomplishment; if you follow the genius you will see what the world cares about.
This multiple use of the word “suggestion” has destroyed its early intent. That made it equivalent to the term “suggestive question.” The older criminalists had a notion of the truth, and have rigorously limited the putting of suggestive questions. At the same time, Mittermaier knew that the questioner was frequently unable to avoid them and that many questions had to suggest their answers. If, for example, a man wants to know whether A had made a certain statement in the course of a long conversation, he must ask, for good or evil, “Has A said that ...?”
Mittermaier’s attitude toward the problem shows that he had already seen twenty-five years ago that suggestive questions of this sort are the most harmless, and that the difficulty really lies in the fact that witnesses, experts, and judges are subject, especially in great and important cases, to the influence of public opinion, of newspapers, of their own experiences, and finally, of their own fancies, and hence give testimony and give judgments in a way less guided by the truth than by these influences.
This difficulty has been made clear by the Berchthold murder-trial in München, in which the excellent psychiatrists Schrenck-Notzing and Grashey had their hands full in answering and avoiding questions about witnesses under the influence of suggestion.[353] The development of this trial showed us the enormous influence of suggestion on witnesses, and again, how contradictory are the opinions concerning the determination of its value—whether it is to be determined by the physician or by the judge; and finally, how little we know about suggestion anyway. Everything is assigned to suggestion. In spite of the great literature we still have too little material, too few observations, and no scientifically certain inferences. Tempting as it is to study the influence of suggestion upon our criminalistic work, it is best to wait and to give our attention mainly to observation, study, and the collection of material.[354]
APPENDIX A.
Bibliography including texts more easily within the reach of English readers.
Abbott, A. Brief for the Trial of Criminal Causes. New York, 1889. 2d ed., Rochester, 1902.
Abbott, B. V. Judge and Jury. New York, 1880.
Antonini, G. Studi di psicopatologia forense. 1901.