Suggestion and Autosuggestion

A Psychological and Pedagogical Study Based Upon the Investigations Made by the New Nancy School

Charles Baudouin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317575627
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

This title, originally published in 1920, second edition in 1924, has been largely forgotten in the history of hypnosis. Charles Baudouin's first book, it is an important account of the early theoriesof the New Nancy School, widely recognised as the founding school of modern day hypnosis. The author provides a detailed discussion of autosuggestion, as well as providing some practical suggestions.

PART ONE

SPONTANEOUS SUGGESTION

CHAPTER ONE

WHY DO WE IGNORE AUTOSUGGESTION?

A KNOWLEDGE of spontaneous suggestion is the necessary foundation for all reflective suggestion. We can resist or correct nature only in proportion as we are able to make a stand against nature by the use of nature’s own weapons; in a word, by imitating nature. And we can only imitate nature in so far as we know her. Now autosuggestion, in its spontaneous form, is a natural phenomenon of our mental life, as natural as the phenomenon termed emotion, or the phenomenon termed idea. Moreover, the former phenomenon occurs just as frequently as either of the two latter. These statements are true although we do not play upon words, although we refrain from extending the significance of the term suggestion until it comes to denote (as in the usage of some writers) emotion and the association of ideas. For our part, we have been careful at the outset to restrict its meaning, and we shall sedulously avoid using it in any wider sense.

But if autosuggestion be a phenomenon of everyday experience, and if it be one which goes on within us, why is it so often overlooked, and why does its discovery come with the force of a revelation? There are numerous reasons.

1. In the first place, let the reader recall the definition of suggestion. He will remember that suggestion is a phenomenon exhibiting three phases:

First phase, the idea of a modification;

Second phase, the work of realisation, performed unconsciously as far as the actual ego is concerned;

Third phase, the appearance of the modification that has been thought.

Now the second phase occurs without our being aware of it. Here, then, we have a causal chain whose two ends are within our grasp, but whose middle eludes us. Not without a certain amount of reflection can we convince ourselves that the ends we hold belong to the same chain.

2. On the other hand, this reflection is, from the nature of the case, absent from our habitual suggestions; for these are, above all, spontaneous phenomena. Examples to be subsequently given will make the reader understand more clearly the extent to which suggestion, in its natural form, is free from conscious effort. But inasmuch as we have said that an act of spontaneous attention is the starting-point of spontaneous suggestion, it will suffice for the moment if the reader will bear in mind how little such an act, which takes place without conscious effort, is likely to leave deep traces in the memory, or to arouse, retrospectively, reflection. Doubtless the object which attracts my spontaneous attention, the light which dazzles me, the melody which fascinates me, are graven in my memory with an intensity proportional to the keenness of my attention. But the act of perception, the mechanism of my awakening attention—what trace will that have left? I was absorbed in the act of contemplation. Like Condillac’s statue, which had become “the scent of a rose,”¹ I was for the moment nothing more than the light or the melody. The perceiving subject had vanished before the intensity of the perceived object, and some difficulty is experienced in observing what was passing at the moment in the subject. Thus the second phase of suggestion eludes consciousness, while the first phase eludes observation.

3. There is an additional reason for our ignorance. Autosuggestion can operate upon us with incalculable power. Now if we permit this force to work spontaneously, in default of rational guidance, disastrous consequences may ensue, and do in fact often ensue. A large number of illnesses arise from this cause alone. Even in the case of morbid phenomena whose cause is obviously physical it frequently happens among persons (and they form the enormous majority) who do not understand the mechanism of spontaneous suggestion, that this force considerably aggravates the malady. But if by our own insight or with the help of others we discover that we have been the architects of our own sufferings, we are extremely loath to admit so humiliating a truth. In fact we refuse to admit it, and directly the discovery presses upon our consciousness, there ensues what psychoanalysts have termed repression, the phenomenon whereby we are induced to forget the very reasons which have led us to the dreaded conclusion. This foolish vanity is far from being exceptional. Those who protest most energetically that they know naught of it, are often most completely enthralled by it, and their protests are nothing more than one of the numerous artifices which the censor employs to fool the consciousness. The same remark applies to the protests of persons who declare that they have never been the victims of unfortunate autosuggestions. We have all suffered in this way, and especially those who regard themselves as immune.

These three reasons suffice to explain why we have remained so completely ignorant of phenomena which concern us so deeply. In ultimate analysis, every one of these reasons proves to be a manifestation of the activity of the “subconscious” or the “unconscious.” Every one of them is a manifestation of the mental activity which goes on in us without our being aware of it. They are part of the furniture of that back shop of the mind; they belong to that life which goes on in the wings instead of on the stage; they are part of that world filled with a strangely vigorous activity, the world in which thought and action continue during sleep. The life of this underworld controls us unceasingly. It leads us at hazard, so long as we lack the clues. But it discloses to us good roads—as soon as we know them well enough to choose our way. Such is the knowledge we hope to acquire in the course of the following pages.

¹ Condillac, Traité des sensations, Amsterdam, Paris, and London, 1754.

CHAPTER TWO

TYPICAL EXAMPLES

BEFORE classifying the numerous examples by which we propose to demonstrate the frequency and the diversity of spontaneous autosuggestions, we shall in the first instance, apart from all classification, give a few examples which will best enable the reader to understand the working of suggestion and will help him to realise its leading characteristics.

At the outset let us consider the well-known phenomenon of fascination, where the attention is so completely captured by an object that the person concerned continually returns to it in spite of himself. In certain neuropathic subjects, fascination displays itself in an aggravated form. But normal persons can grasp what we mean by fascination when they think of the attraction caused by a luminous point. A still better example is the auditory fascination exercised by a door banging repeatedly during the night, so that we cannot help listening for the recurrence of the sound. We cock our ears as we wait for its coming; and we curse the door that keeps us awake, not so much by the intensity of the noise as by the fact that we are continually on the alert.¹

What has happened? The first thing is the working of spontaneous attention. The isolated noise, breaking the silence of the night, naturally attracts the ear. Then, our attention recurring again and again to this noise, we imagine that it is impossible for us to refrain from attending. Next, the idea materialises (here we have suggestion at work), and in fact we are no longer able to withdraw the attention. We have spontaneously suggested our own impotence.

We now make repeated efforts to release the attention from the object which fascinates it, but at each successive effort we feel that our powerlessness becomes more evident. Here is the remarkable point: the effort counteracts itself, turning to the right when it wishes to turn to the left; our effort spontaneously reverses itself in accordance with the idea which actually dominates the mind and which has become a suggestion—the idea of impotence. In a word, the more we wish, the less are we able.

We shall see later that a definite law is here in operation. The characteristics just described as attaching to spontaneous suggestion will stand out far more clearly when they have been evoked as it were to order, by means of reflective or induced suggestion. Coué and other investigators noted these characteristics first of all when they had been artificially evoked, and were subsequently able to recognise them in purely spontaneous suggestions.

From fascination we pass by an easy stage to obsession, which is nothing more than a mental fascination, a fascination by images, memories, ideas, from which we cannot free the mind, simply because we think we cannot free it and because this thought becomes a suggestion. The fixed idea is only the ultimate degree of obsession. Moreover, obsession and fascination, which become more overwhelming at every effort made to dispel them, can be dispelled by a reflective autosuggestion or by an induced suggestion. (Let me say parenthetically at this stage that reflective autosuggestion and induced suggestion comprise a form of action totally distinct from voluntary effort.¹ )

Neurasthenia may be considered from the neurological outlook. But mental conditions play a predominant part in this disorder. From the mental point of view it may be said that neurasthenia is an obsession by “black” ideas, melancholy, anguish, a sense of powerlessness, fears more or less well founded. Here, too, effort for deliverance is fatal. To use Coué’s simile, the neurasthenic, like a man caught in a quicksand, engulfs himself more hopelessly with every effort he makes to get free. On the other hand, when, through countersuggestion or through any other cause, the autosuggestion of powerlessness disappears from the patient’s mind, he immediately finds himself on the high road to recovery.

Furthermore, the psychology of the neurasthenic exhibits certain characteristic features of suggestion which will have to be more fully considered later, for their theoretical and practical consequences are of the first importance. It seems as if the neurasthenic wished to be sad, as if he craved for black ideas. Through the influence of the subconscious he is led unwittingly to seize upon anything which can supply his melancholy with some shadow of reason. In the newspaper he pounces on a paragraph recording a disaster. In his personal memories, he can recall only the gloomy days. He hunts down painful incidents as a beast hunts its prey. He does this, of course, without wishing to; and he does it all the more when he tries not to. In a word, everything happens as if a single goal were in prospect—to be sorrowful. Everything happens as if the subconscious were employing all possible artifices to attain this goal, were inventing all conceivable means to realise this end. At a later stage we shall analyse yet more striking examples of such teleology.

Our series of preliminary examples must be concluded with an account of vertigo. Coué writes on this subject: “Lay upon the ground a plank thirty feet long and nine inches wide. Everyone will be able to walk along this plank without putting a foot to the ground on either side. Now change the conditions of the experiment. Let the plank connect the twin towers of a cathedral, and tell me who will be able to walk for a yard along this narrow pathway. Do you think you will be able to? You could not make a couple of steps without beginning to tremble; and then, despite all your efforts of will, you would inevitably fall.” ¹

This well-known phenomenon, a fall due to vertigo, is extremely instructive from the light it throws upon the emotional mechanism of spontaneous suggestion. The perception of the abyss beneath naturally arouses the idea of a possible fall. But often enough we think of a fall without falling. Why, in the present instance, does the idea of a fall become transformed into a fall? In other words, why does the suggestion realise itself?

Let us examine the matter introspectively. What difference do we find between the case when we think of a fall as we are walking at ease along the ground, and the case when the same thought comes to our minds on the top of a cathedral tower? The difference is that in the latter instance the idea of danger is inseparable from the idea of the fall. We are afraid. When we say this we lay a finger upon the crucial factor of emotion, which is the main cause of the majority of spontaneous suggestions. In the case now under consideration, this emotional factor is peculiarly conspicuous; but it is by no means absent from the suggestions previously considered. Obsessions and neurasthenia are sustained by a perpetual accompaniment of emotion, sometimes acute, sometimes massive; and they find an appropriate soil in persons of a highly emotional disposition.

Let us bear in mind, henceforward, this close tie between emotion and spontaneous suggestion. The attention which is the primary cause of spontaneous suggestion is an affective state, and is not purely intellectual. Spontaneous suggestion, like emotion, seizes us without our knowing why. In nothing are we more passive, more carried away despite ourselves. Vertigo is typical of such suggestions; and Suggestion itself, in so far as it enters the realm of consciousness, is a sort of vertigo. In so far as it enters the realm of consciousness—this reservation is indispensable; for in many instances the process takes place in the sphere of the subconscious, and the subject is aware of the result alone.

¹ This example and other analogous ones have been ably analysed by Paul Souriau of Nancy University. Cf. La suggestion dans l’art, Alcan, Paris.

¹ The reader cannot guard too carefully against confounding voluntary effort with autosuggestion. We shall see that the latter is efficacious precisely in proportion as it is remote from the former.

¹ Coué, De la suggestion et de ses applications. Barbier, Nancy, 1915, pp. 5 and 6.

CHAPTER THREE

REPRESENTATIVE SUGGESTIONS

(IMAGES, JUDGMENTS, HALLUCINATIONS, HALLUCINATION BY COMPROMISE AND BY TRANSFER)

IN view of the practical and pedagogic aim of the present work, it is essential that we should make the reader understand the frequency of spontaneous suggestion. We shall give a great variety of examples, without multiplying them unduly.

These examples must not be presented in disorderly array. A simple classification is the following:

A. Instances belonging to the representative domain (sensations, mental images, dreams, visions, memories, opinions, and all intellectual phenomena);

B. Instances belonging to the affective domain (joy or sorrow, emotions, sentiments, tendenci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Translators’ Preface
• Author’s Preface to the Third French Edition
• Author’s Preface to the First Edition
• Introduction: What is Suggestion?
• Part One: Spontaneous Suggestion
• Part Two: Reflective Suggestion
• Part Three: Induced Suggestion
• Conclusion: Suggestion and the Will
• Glossary
• Index