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subject through the influence of suggestion alone. Although others had hinted at this position, Bernheim was
the first to take it explicitly and unambiguously. 228
Since suggestibility, not hypnotic sleep, was the basic underlying phenomenon for Bernheim, he also argued
that while hypnosis, and especially the deep sleep of somnambulism, helped eliminate the interference of
conscious reason and judgment and therefore promoted suggestibility, it was not a prerequisite for suggestion
to be effective. The influence of suggestion could be observed in the waking state just as it could under
hypnosis.
This fact, together with the observation that both negative (inhibitory) phenomena such as paralysis and
systematized anesthesia and positive (excitatory) phenomena such as ideomotor actions and hallucinations
could be elicited in the subject through suggestion led Bernheim to the realization that suggestion could be
turned to good effect in relieving subjects of unhealthy symptomatology. This was the method of suggestive
therapeutics and it was to the elucidation of this method that Bernheim devoted the last section of his book.
After providing a short historical review of the various ways in which therapeutic use had been made of
suggestion in the past, even when the effective mechanism was unknown to those who employed it,
Bernheim presented almost 200 pages of detailed observations taken from his own clinical use of this
technique. These case studies documented the use of suggestion in the treatment of diseases of the nervous
system, hysteria, neuropathy, neuroses, paralyses, pain, rheumatism, gastrointestinal ailments, and menstrual
disorders. Coupled as they were with a brilliant theoretical analysis of suggestibility, Bernheim's observations
provided both a persuasive argument for the use of suggestive therapeutics and a manual for how to proceed.
219
Libeault, A-A. (1866). Du sommeil et des tats analogues, considrs surtout au point de vue de l'action
du morale sur le physique. Paris: Victor Masson et fils; Nancy: Nicolas Grosjean.
220
By 1866, the therapeutic use of artificial somnambulism already had a long history, beginning with its
discovery in 1789 by Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puysgur. While most of those involved
in the therapeutic application of artificial somnambulism subscribed to one or another version of Franz Anton
Mesmer's physical fluid theory, a few, such as Abb Faria, Alexandre Bertrand and Gnral Noizet, had early on
recognized the importance of mental suggestion in the production of therapeutic effects. For a lovely
discussion of this history, see Ellenberger, H.F. (1970). Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and
Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
221
1823-1904. For biographical information on Libeault, see Renterghem, A.W. van (1898). Libeault en zijne
School. Amsterdam: F. Van Rossen.
222
1840-1919. For biographical information on Bernheim, see Huard, P. (1973). Hippolyte Bernheim. In C.C.
Gillispie (Ed.). Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Vol. 2). New York: Scribner's, pp. 35-6.
223
Bernheim, H. (1884). De la suggestion dans l'tat hypnotique et dans l'tat de veille. Paris: Octave Doin.
224
Bernheim, H. (1886). De la suggestion et de ses applications la thrapeutique. Paris: Octave Doin; the
English translation, from the second revised edition, is Bernheim, H. (1889). Suggestive Therapeutics. A
Treatise on the Nature and Uses of Hypnotism. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
225
Not only did Bernheim derive much of the content of his views from Libeault, who had, in turn, profited
from the work of those mentioned in footnote 220, he was also anticipated by the British physiological
psychologist, William B. Carpenter, who published a seminal paper on suggestion in 1852: Carpenter, W.B.
(1852). On the influence of suggestion modifying and directing muscular movement, independently of volition.
Proceedings, Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1, 147-53.
226
For Freud, see Chertok, L. & De Saussure, R. (1979). The Therapeutic Revolution. From Mesmer to
Freud. New York: Brunner/Mazel; for Baldwin, see Baldwin, J. M. (1930). James Mark Baldwin. In C.
Murchison (Ed.), A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. 1). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press,
pp. 1-30; for Scott, see Kuna, D.P. (1976). The concept of suggestion in the early history of advertising
psychology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 12, 347-53.
227
228
In doing so, Bernheim placed himself in direct opposition to the great Paris neurologist, Jean-Martin
Charcot, who argued that hypnotic susceptibility was pathological, closely linked to hysteria, and that hypnotic
phenomena emerged in a strictly defined, physiologically determined series of stages. For a discussion of this
interesting controversy, see Ellenberger, op. cit.