Hypnosis Suggestions Daily News

Freud, we may recall, was originally a student of Charcot. He studied and practiced hypnotism, and his patients were often hysterics. But he did not quite fit into the shoes of his teacher and found waking suggestion much more to his taste. Taking up Breuer's hint, he devised the rules of psychoanalysis as a better substitute (so he believed) for other methods of suggestion treatment. His approach was thoroughly practical and, coupled with the vast imagination he possessed, led him away from, rather than toward, the study of causes, which underlies all science. Now, suggestion does not operate in vacuo, but in a human body; and its effects arise not as a result of "telepathy," but through the mediation of a bodily mechanism. This mechanism, we must remind ourselves, is active in every sort of prestige-and-faith situation and is nothing other than the autonomic nervous system, connected in both directions with the central nervous system and, through it, with conscious experience.