Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing, George Barton Cutten [crime books to read TXT] 📗

In 1841 the French magnetizer, La Fontaine, gave some public exhibitions in Manchester which attracted the attention of a physician by the name of James Braid. Through the aid rendered by Braid, animal magnetism blossomed into a science. He directed the subject into its proper field: he eschewed the occult and mysterious, and emphasized observation and experiment. It was Braid who gave us the word "hypnotism." At first a sceptic, he began experimenting and proved that fixity of gaze had in some way such an influence on the nervous system of the subject that he went off into a sleep. He therefore opined that the transmission of a fluid by the operator had no part in the matter.

He further showed that an assumed attitude changed the subject's sentiments in harmony with the attitude, and that the degree of sleep varied with different persons, and with the same person at different times. He also noted the acuteness of the senses during hypnosis, and that verbal suggestion would produce hallucinations, emotions, paralysis, etc. Therapeutics was a subject in which he was naturally interested, and his experiments on different diseases were frequent and valuable. Braid made some mistakes, as was natural, but his discoveries covered the field so well and his ideas were so sound that too much credit cannot be ascribed to him. At first he thought hypnotism (Braidism) was identical with animal magnetism, but later made the mistake of considering it analogous, and the two flourished side by side and independently.

Animal magnetism was first introduced into America in 1836 by Mr. Charles Poyan, a French gentleman. A few years later a certain Dr. Collyer lectured upon it in New England. New Orleans was, however, for a long time its chief centre. In 1848 Grimes, working independently, appears to have arrived at about the same conclusions as Braid. He showed that most of the hypnotic phenomena could be produced in the waking state in some subjects, by means of verbal suggestion. The phenomena were known under the name of electro-biology. In 1850 Darling went to England and introduced electro-biology, but it was soon identified with Braidism, and in 1853 Durand de Gros, who wrote under the pseudonym of Philips, exhibited the phenomena of electro-biology in several countries, but aroused little attention.

Azam of Bordeaux and Broca of Paris made some experiments following Braid's method, and several times performed some painless operations by this means. They were followed by numerous others in all European countries and in America. In fact, the interest in the subject became general, and as more was known about it, fewer objections were heard. Societies were formed for the study of hypnotism, publications were started devoting all their space to the exposition and discussion of it, and as this third period advanced, its scientific value was more and more recognized from the stand-points of psychology, pathology, and therapeutics.

In a brief résumé like this it would be impossible to name even the chief experimenters in the different countries who contributed to this period, but some names stand out so prominently that they should be emphasized, for they must be reckoned in importance with Braid's. Liebeault, whose book, Du Sommeil, etc., was published in 1866, has been called the founder of the therapeutics of suggestion. While suggestion in both waking and hypnotic states had been applied long before Liebeault's day, it was he who first fully and methodically recognized its value. We are also indebted to him for stimulating in the study of hypnosis Bernheim and other prominent investigators. Liebeault at the head of the School of Nancy was not less known than Charcot at the Salpêtrière.

Charcot was indefatigable in his researches, but was led away in his conclusions by artifacts. For example: three states were produced in the hypnotic subject which Charcot considered to be symptomatic and characteristic. They were catalepsy, lethargy, and somnambulism. Certain physical excitations, such as rubbing the scalp or exposing the eyes to a bright light, were thought to be all that was necessary to change the subject from one stage to another. It has since been shown that not only were the states of catalepsy, lethargy, and somnambulism produced by suggestion, but the physical stimuli were simply suggestions and signs by which the subject knew that a particular change was expected, and, in harmony with hypnotic action, the expected change came about. Not only did Charcot make this mistake, but some of his followers of the Salpêtrière School continued to be deceived for years afterward.

Hardly a conclusion of Charcot's remains to-day, and yet so earnest was he in his investigations and so untiring in his experiments, that many of his facts contributed much to our knowledge of the subject even if his theories have been rejected. Binet, Féré, and other followers of his have contributed much to the science and literature of the subject. The latter half of this period is not unknown to us to-day, and as the names connected with it are familiar, it remains for me to mention but one more name, that of the one who ushered in the fourth period, F. W. H. Myers.

From its beginning Myers was prominently connected with the Society for Psychical Research and occupied the offices of president and secretary. He held the latter position at the time of his death in 1901. In 1887 he formulated his theory of the subliminal self or subliminal consciousness, a theory which has come to be more and more accepted, and the value of which has received increasing appreciation. It has been known as the "subconscious self" or the "subconsciousness" probably more than by Myers's original title; and his theory has been modified by some subtractions and additions, but it is generally accepted to-day and its exposition has helped solve many problems in abnormal psychology. In no department has it contributed more than in that of hypnotism, for by it this state has been partially explained.

For a number of years Charcot and his followers put forward a physiological theory of hypnotism which waged war with that of the Nancy School, under Liebeault, but even before Charcot's death he recognized the validity of the Nancy claims while still clinging to his own. Few if any espouse Charcot's claims to-day. The general psychological theory of Nancy, which bases the results on suggestion, is that currently accepted, while a theory not very different from that of animal magnetism has been held by some of those who accepted the spiritualistic hypothesis, notably among whom was Myers.

Hypnotism to-day is recognized as the product of a long line of erroneous theory and zigzag development, but the wheat has largely been sifted and the chaff thrown to the winds of antiquity. Its therapeutic and psychological value is duly recognized by science to-day.189