The observation of organic bashfulness tends, when viewed in connection with this earlier point, to confirm this view of the way the child begins to apprehend per- sons; and at the same time, it enables us to see a little farther. For strange as it may appear, we are here con- fronted with an element of organic equipment especially fitted to receive and respond to these peculiar objects, per- sons, 'personal projects.' The child strikes instinctively an extraordinary series of attitudes when persons appear among his objects, attitudes which other objects, qita objects, do not excite. And later in life, in the organic effects indicative of modesty, such as blushing, hesitat- ing, etc., we find similar signs of a social rapport which has grown into the very fibers of our nerves. These attitudes extend somewhat to animals, as we have seen; and that makes it all the more striking. For animals are persons, to a child of that age; they act upon him through his animal parts, through physical pains, pleasures, fears, etc., and that is the only way that persons also can act upon an infant a year old.
Inhibitory Suggestion. 153 We have to say, therefore, that the child is born to be a member of society, in the same sense, precisely, that he is born with eyes and ears to see and hear the movements and sounds of the world, and with touch to feel the things of space; and, as I hope to show later in detail, all views of the man as a total creature a creation, must recognize him not as a single soul shut up in a single body to act, or to abstain from acting, upon others similarly shut up in similar bodies; but as a soul partly in his own body, partly in the bodies of others, to all intents and purposes, so inti- mate is this social bond — a service for which he pays in kind, since we see in his body, considered simply as a physical organism, preparation for the reception of the soul-life, the suggestions of mind and spirit, of those others. I do not see wherein the community of the senses together, in a single life of nervous activity, differs very much in conception from this community of men, bound together by the native ties which lie at the basis of their most abstract and developed social organizations.
Again, the second phase of the child's actions in the presence of persons — the freer, more ready reception of strangers and intercourse with them, seen usually during the second year — this also gives us what our earlier notes on * personality suggestion ' would lead us to expect. We saw that the child begins to find out more about persons, and so to gain associations which give him the beginning of certain expectations regarding them; self-formed ex- pectations, that is, no longer dependent merely upon the stirrings of instinct and inherited impulse. He learns that pleasure almost always comes from persons, and so does the alleviation of pain. This is a mortal blow at organic bashfulness, as every father and mother knows. A lump 1 5 4 Suggestion.
1 5 4 Suggestion.
of sugar will very soon release the inhibitions of the shy year-old. Then he further learns something of the char- acteristics of persons, the irregularity of personal action, the presence of the ' personal equation ' of mood and feeling in those nearest to him. This leads him to seek out methods, somewhat individual to himself, of pleasing these near persons and of securing their smile and appro- bation, or of escaping the reproofs which even his shy- ness brings; and these he substitutes for the blinder attempt which nature taught him to hide his physical person.
And he also learns our habits, the regularities of char- acter in adults, and so learns that nobody means to hurt him, after all. It is amusing how soon a two- or three- year-old child * sizes up ' a stranger, and meets him half- way with conduct more or less appropriately attuned to the indications of character shown in the face and acts of the newcomer.
So, with all this, the instinctive or ' organic ' bashf ulness gets rapidly rubbed away. But it is now clear that the means of this freedom from it are all social. A child's growth away from the instinct of social fear to the appre- hension of social truth, and all his actions midway in this progress, come only from varied and persistent experience of people and appeals to living examples. How can char- acter be apprehended if characters are absent } And how can character-schemes be grown into, if the regularity of the child's life is of so narrow a scope that all the threads of his social relationship run the same way, and no tan- gles and confusions arise to bring out his own strenuous action and his rebellions against his native reflex ways of behaviour } IiiJiibitory Suggesliou. 155 The on-coming of true bashfulness, finally, — the bash- fulness which shows reflection, in its simpler form, upon self and the actions of self, — represents the child's direct application of what he knows of persons to his own inner life. It is what I have called the * subjective ' stage in his sense of personality.^ But, as we shall also see, this grows only apace with the contrary movement by which he assigns his own enriched mental experience back to his teacher, and seeks his further judgment upon it. The child, when he knows himself able to draw a figure, for example, does not know this alone, or this completely. He has also the sense of the social * copy ' or example from which the lesson was learned, and further and with it, he knows that his per- formance is again subject to revision in light of the approval or disapproval of teacher or friend. The per- formances of the self cannot in any case be freed from the sense of possible inspection by others, and the child shrinks from this inspection. This has further develop- ment below. Suffice it to say that in this higher rapport, which involves closely the sense of self-agency, but self- agency still tied down to the agency of other people like self, — here in the real reflective relation of self to others, — comes the third and crowning stage of the class of phenomena known by the word bashfulness. My chil- dren do their imperfect tasks for me because they know me to understand and be indulgent: even the elder, as- sumes the patron, and says of the younger: * She is so little, you know.' But in the presence of the stranger whose opinion is not known beforehand, they are bashful with the sense of new standards perhaps firmly insisted ^ See Mind, January, 1.S94; also below, Chap. XI., § 3.
156 Stcggestion.
upon. This is where the inhibiting suggestion of true bashfulness appears: that of modesty, and clearly also that of certain ethical emotions.
The whole situation becomes, I may add, an extraordi- nary point of vantage for estimating the development view of the origin of the social and personal sense. We have in it direct evidence of the growth of the social instinct by accretions from experiences of social conditions — or if we go into refinements of biological theory, from the adding up of variations all fitted to survive socially — and direct evidence, further, of the lines of progress which these experiences and variations have marked out. For the infant is an embryo person, a social unit in the process of forming; and he is, in these early stages, plainly recapitulating the items in the social history of the race.^ This social evolution presents a phase, therefore, of gen- eral development in which the theory that the individual goes through stages which repeat the race-stages of his species, ought to find illustrations of more than common value. For the social life is a late attainment, whether considered anthropologically or racially, and the child waits to begin the series of ' laps in the social race ' until he meets us, his observers, face to face. The embryology of society is open to study in the nursery.
I think, accordingly, that several important hints at the history of societies, both animal and human, are afforded by the phenomena of bashfulness as now described. These I can do no more than mention at present.
Organic bashfulness would seem to represent the in- ^ See the discussion of the biological theory of 'Recapitulation,' above, Chap. I.
Inhibitory Stiggcstion. 157 stinctive fear shown by the higher Linimals, coupled with the natural family and gregarious instincts which they have. This shades up into the more fearless and more confiding attitudes of certain passibly peaceable creatures, which take kindly to domestication, and depend more upon animal organizations and natural defences, such as those afforded by geographical distribution, coloration, habits of life, etc., for their protection. For the social protections are after all more effective for the defence of racial life and propagation than the special instinctive armament of individuals. Then, of course, only in man do we find the stage of reflective thought on self and the social relations of self, which is seen germinating in the child in the third year or later.
The parallel seems also to be worth something to the anthropologist when he comes to inquire into the history of the human species. Admitting with Westermarck that man as a species is monogamous and tends to family life, we should find in his earliest history the period corre- sponding to the organic bashfulness of the child; and its instinctive presence in the very young child lends some support, perhaps, to Westermarck's view. The later tribal and nomadic conditions possibly tended to release the cords of an instinct so purely defensive, and to bring in the freer range of peaceful pursuits represented, it is con- ceivable, by the second stage of the child's history; while again the stage of development of the distinctly industrial, artistic, and commercial life of man, with its social ways of solving all problems of public welfare, corresponds to the more reflective attainments of the period which is seen dawning in the true bashfulness of the three-year-old. For there can be no doubt that recent writers are correct 158 Suggestion.
158 Suggestion.
in finding that the more refined egoism is a reflex from the more generahzed sociaUsm; a thesis which social psy- chology takes now from the analyses of men like Balzac and Bourget and the insights of Tarde and the historians of society; but one which it is itself quite able, I think, to make good by its own methods of inquiry.
§ 7. Hypnotic Suggestion.
The facts upon which the current theories of hypnotism are based may be summed up under a few heads, and the recital of them will serve to bring this class of phenomena into the general lines of classification drawn out in this chapter.
TJic Facts. When by any cause the attention is held fixed upon an object, say a bright button, for a sufficient time without distraction, the subject begins to lose con- sciousness in a progressive way. Generalizing this simple experiment, we may say that any method or device which serves to secure undivided and prolonged attention to any kind of a 'suggestion,' — be it object, idea, anything that can be thought about, — this brings on what is called hypnosis to a person normally constituted.
The Paris school of interpreters find three stages of progress in the hypnotic sleep: First, catalepsy, character- ized by rigid fixity of the muscles in any position in which the limbs may be put by the experimenter, with great suggestibility on the side of consciousness, and anaesthesia in certain areas of the skin and in certain of the special senses; second, lethargy, in which consciousness seems to disappear entirely, the subject cannot be aroused by any sense stimulation by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body is flabby and pliable as in natural sleep; third, somnainbulisin, so called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep- walking condition to which many persons are subject. This last covers the phenomena of ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists ' control ' per- sons before audiences and make them obey their com- mands. While other scientists properly deny these distinct stages as such, they may yet be taken as representing extreme instances of the phenomena, and serve as points of departure for further discussion.
On the mental side the general characteristics of hyp- notic somnambulism are as follows: i. TJie impairing of memory in a peculiar way. In the hypnotic condition all affairs of the ordinary life are forgotten; on the other hand, after waking, the events of the hypnotic condition are forgotten. Further, in any subsequent period of hyp- nosis the events of the former similar periods are remem- bered. So a person who is habitually hypnotized has two continuous memories; one for the events of his normal life, only when he is normal, and one for the events of his hypnotic periods, only when he is hypnotized.
2. Suggestibility to a remarkable degree. By this is meant the tendency of the subject to have in reality any mental condition which is suggested to him. He is sub- ject to suggestions both on the side of his receptivity to impressions and on the side of action. He will see, hear, remember, believe, refuse to see, hear, etc., anything, with some doubtful exceptions, which may be suggested to him by word or deed, or even by the slightest and perhaps un- conscious indications of those about him. On the side of conduct his suggestibility is equally remarkable. Not only will he act in harmony with the illusions of sight, etc., sug- gested to him, but he will carry out, like an automaton, 1 60 Suggestion.
the actions suggested to him. Further, pain, pleasure, and the organic accompaniments of them may be produced by suggestion. The arm may be actually scarred with a lead-pencil if the patient be told that it is red-hot iron. A suggested pain brings vaso-motor and other bodily changes that prove, as similar tests in the other cases prove, that simulation is impossible and the phenomena are real. These phenomena and those given below are no longer based on the mere reports of the ' mesmerists,' but are the recognized property of legitimate psychology.
Again, such suggestions may be for a future time, and get themselves performed only when a determined inter- val has elapsed; they are then called deferred or post- hypnotic suggestions. Post-hypnotic suggestions are those which include the command not to perform them until a certain time after the subject has returned to his normal condition; such suggestions are — if of reasonably trifling character — actually carried out afterward in the normal state, although the person is conscious of no reason why he should act in such a way, having no remembrance whatever that he had received the suggestion when hyp- notized. Such post-hypnotic performances may be de- ferred by suggestion for many months.
3. So-called Exaltation of the mental faculties, espe- cially of the senses: increased acuteness of vision, hear- ing, touch, memory, and the mental functions generally. By reason of this great 'exaltation,' hypnotized patients may get suggestions which are not intended from experi- menters, and discover their intentions when every effort is made to conceal them. Often emotional changes in expression are discerned by them; and if it be admitted that their power of logical and imaginative insight is cor- Hypnotic Suggestion. i6i respondingly exalted, there is practically no limit to the patient's ability to read, simply from physical indications, the mental states of those who experiment with him.
4. So-called Rapport. This term covers all the facts, known before the subject was scientifically investigated, by such expressions as * personal magnetism,' ' will power ' over the subject, etc. It is true that one particular opera- tor alone may be able to hypnotize a particular patient; and in this case the patient is, when hypnotized, open to suggestions only from this person. He is deaf and blind to everything enjoined by any one else. It is easy to see from what has already been said that this does not involve any occult nerve influence or mental power. A sensitive patient anybody can hypnotize, provided only that the patient have the idea or conviction that the experimenter possesses such power. Now, let a patient get the idea that only one man can hypnotize him, and that is the beginning of the hypnotic suggestion itself. It is a part of the suggestion that a certain personal rapport is neces- sary; so the patient must have this rapport. This is shown by the fact that, when such a patient is hypnotized, the operator in rapport with him can transfer the so-called control to any one else simply by suggesting to the patient that this third party can also hypnotize him. Rapport, there- fore, and all the amazing claims of charlatans to powers of charming, stealing another's personality, controlling his will at a distance — all such claims are explained, as far as they have anything to rest upon, by suggestion under conditions of mental hyperaesthesia or exaltation.
I may now add certain practical remarks on this subject, since it is new, and since these remarks may tend to mark off the range of the phenomena more clearly.
In general, any method which fixes the attention to a single stimulus long enough is probably sufficient to pro- duce hypnosis; but the result is quick and profound in proportion as the patient has the idea that it is going to succeed, i.e., gets the suggestion of sleep. It may be said, therefore, that the elaborate performances, such as passes, rubbings, mysterious incantations, etc., often re- sorted to, have no physiological effect whatever, and only serve to work in the way of suggestion upon the mind of the subject. In view of this it is probable that any person in normal health can be hypnotized, provided he is not too sceptical of the operator's knowledge and powers; and, on the contrary, any one can hypnotize another, provided he do not arouse too great scepticism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is probable, however, that susceptibility varies greatly in degree, and that race exerts an important influence. Thus in Europe the French seem to be the most susceptible, and the Eng- lish and Scandinavians the least so. The impression that weak-minded persons are most available is quite mistaken. On the contrary, patients in the insane asylums, idiots, etc., are the most refractory. This is to be expected, from the fact that in these cases power of strong, steady atten- tion is wanting. The only one class of pathological cases which seem peculiarly open to the hypnotic influence is that of the hystero-epileptics, whose tendencies are toward extreme suggestibility. Further, one may hypnotize him- self— so-called aitto-siiggcstion — especially after having been put into the trance more than once by others.^ ^ It is further evident that frequent hypnotization is very damaging if done by the same operator, since then the patient contracts a habit of responding to the same class of suggestions; and this may influence his normal life. A further danger arises from the possibility that all suggestions have not been * So-called ' criminal suggestions ' may be made, with more or less effect, in the hypnotic state. Cases have been tried in the French courts, in which evidence for and against such influence of a third person over the criminal has been admitted. The reality of the phenomenon, how- ever, is in dispute. The Paris school claims that criminal acts can be suggested to the hypnotized subject which are just as certain to be performed by him as any other acts. Such a subject will discharge a blank-loaded pistol at any one, when told to do so, or stab him with a paper dagger. While admitting the facts, the Nancy theorists claim that the subject knows the performance to be a farce; gets suggestions of the unreality of it from the experimenters, and so acquiesces. This is probably true, as is seen in frequent cases in which patients have refused, in the hypnotic sleep, to perform suggested acts which shocked their modesty, veracity, etc. This goes to show that the Nancy school are right in saying that while, in hypnosis, suggestibility is exaggerated to an enormous degree, still it has limits in the more well-knit habits, moral sentiments, social opinions, etc., of the subjects.
removed from the patient's mind before his awaking. Competent scientific observers always make it a point to do this. It is possible also that damaging effects result directly to a man from frequent hypnotizing; and this is probable to a degree, simply from the fact that the state is abnormal and, while it lasts, pathological. Consequently, all general exhibitions in public, as well as all individual exercises of this kind, should be prohibited by law, and the whole practical application, as well as observation of hypnosis should be left in the hands of physicians who have proved their fitness by an examination and se- cured a certificate of license.
Farther, Liegeois suggests — what is quite an unnecessary resource — that every child should be hypnotized by a special official, and the suggestion made to him, once for all, that no one under any circumstances shall be able to throw him into hypnosis again. In Russia, a decree (summer, 1S93) per- mits physicians to practise hypnotism for purposes of cure under official certi- ficates. In France public exhibitions are forbidden.
1 64 Suggestion.
And it further shows that hypnosis is probably, as they claim, a temporary disturbance, rather than a pathological condition of mind and body.
There have been many remarkable and sensational cases of cure of disease by hypnotic suggestion reported, espe- cially in France. That hysteria in all its manifold mani- festations has been relieved is certainly true, but that any organic, structural disease has ever been cured by hypno- tism is unproven. It is not regarded by medical authori- ties as an agent of much therapeutic value, and is rarely employed; but it is doubtful, in view of the natural preju- dice caused by the pretensions of charlatans, whether its merits have been fairly tested.^ Theory. Two rival theories are held as to the general character of hypnosis. The Paris school already referred to, led by Charcot, hold that it is a pathological condition which can be induced only in patients already mentally dis- eased, or having neuropathic tendencies. They claim that the three stages described above are a discovery of great importance.^ The so-called Nancy school, on the other 1 On the European continent it has been successfully applied in a great va- riety of cases; and Bernheim has shown that minor nervous troubles, insom- nia, migraines, drunkenness, lighter cases of rheumatism, sexual and digestive disorders, together with a host of smaller temporary causes of pain — corns, cricks in back and side, etc. — may be cured or very materially alleviated by suggestions conveyed in the hypnotic state. In many cases such cures are permanently effected with aid from no other remedies. In a number of great city hospitals, patients of recognized classes are at once hypnotized, and sug- gestions of cure made. Liebeault, the founder of the Nancy school, has the credit of having first made use of hypnosis as a remedial agent. It is also be- coming more and more recognized as a method of controlling refractory and violent patients in asylums and reformatory institutions. It must be added, however, that * in general' psychological theory rather than medical practice is seriously concerning itself with this subject.
^ The best books on this side are Binet and Fere, Animal Magnetism; Law of Dyiiainogcucsis. 165 hand, led by Bcrnheim, deny the pathological character of hypnosis altogether, claiming that the hypnotic condition is nothing more than a special form of ordinary sleep brought on artificially by suggestion. Suggestion, they say, is only an exaggeration of an influence to which all persons are normally subject. All the variations, stages, curious phenomena, etc., of the Paris school, say they, can be explained by this ' suggestion ' hypothesis. The Nancy school is completely victorious, as far as the great mass of the facts are concerned.^ The facts show an intimacy of interaction between mind and body, to which current psychology in its psycho-phy- sical theories is only beginning to do justice; and it is this aspect of the whole matter which I would emphasize in this connection. It will be observed that all the phases of ' suggestion,' passed in review in earlier sections of this chapter, get direct illustration from similar phenomena occurring in hypnosis. I need not cite them again in de- tail. The hypnotic condition of consciousness may, there- fore, be taken to represent the thing called * suggestion ' most remarkably.
§ 8. Lazv of Dynainogencsis.
The facts of suggestion now given may be generalized under a so-called 'law,' which current psychology and biology agree in accepting as a well-established principle Janet, Aiitomatisme Psychologique; Charcot's medical treatises (^CpAivres co7npletes. Vol. IX.); numerous articles in the Revue Philosophiqtie.
1 Their best books are Moll, Hypnotism; Bernheim, Szigi^cstive Therapeu- tics; Atucies notivelles sur V Ilypnofisme; Ochorowicz, Mental Suggestion. Cf. my popular articles * Among the Psychologists of Paris ' and ' Willi Bernheim at Nancy' in the Nation (N.Y. ), July 28, and Aug. II, 1892, ant! 'Hypnotism' in the new edition (1894) of Johnson's Universal Cydopa:dia..
1 6 6 Suggestion.
1 6 6 Suggestion.
of the manifestations of organic and mental life. The principle of contractility recognized in biology simply states that all stimulations to living matter, — from proto- plasm to the highest vegetable and animal structures, — if they take effect at all, tend to bring about movements or contractions in the mass of the organism. This is now also safely established as a phenomenon of consciousness — that every sensation or incoming process tends to bring about action or outgoing process. The facts of suggestion now set forth may be taken as, in so far, an array of evi- dence in support of what we may call, once for all, Dynaino- gencsis. Certain practical illustrations of it are given in the chapters which immediately precede: they show also the sure foundation of the method of studying children which I have based upon it. I shall accordingly expect no opposition to the use of this principle as the founda- tion-stone of the theory of organic development developed subsequently in this work, however faulty my presentation of it may be in the eyes of competent critics in either of these sciences.