psychophysical processes, and these in turn change the vegetative
functions of the body, but especially the other parts of the brain and
nervous system can be affected in most different ways. If we want to
consider whether a certain variation of the personality demands curative
treatment, we certainly cannot confine ourselves to the mental
variations. They are after all only parts of the whole group of changes
in the organism and are thus symptoms of a disease which has to be
studied in its totality. The mental symptoms alone may be relatively
slight variations, which in themselves might be sufficiently balanced
not to disturb the equilibrium of life, and yet they may be symptoms of
a brain disturbance which as a whole must interfere with the safety of
life. On the other hand, mental life may appear like a chaos and yet the
disturbance may be the symptom of merely a slight brain affection and
the treatment of the mental symptoms in their apparent severity would be
a useless effort. The mental disturbance, for instance, of the
intoxicated or the hashish smoker, even the delirium of the feverish,
does not suggest a fight against the mental symptoms during the attack.

On the whole, there is a far-reaching independence between the apparent
mental variations and the seriousness of the brain affection. Light
hysteric states may produce a strong absenting of the mind while severe
epileptic conditions of the brain may be accompanied by very slight
mental changes. Every neurasthenic state may play havoc with mental
life, while grave brain destructions may only shade slightly the
character or the intellect. To deal with the mental changes as if they
belonged to a sphere by itself, to the soul which is well or ill through
its own independent alterations without steadily relating the changes to
the total organism, leads therefore necessarily to failure. The mind
reflects only symptoms of the disease; the disease itself belongs always
to the organism. Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the belief
that the removal of mental symptoms is a cure of disease.

Certainly the psychophysical symptoms may often stand in the foreground
of the disease, and in that case it may be left to the special needs
whether we deal with them as psychical or as physical changes. Even the
patient may be made to see them in one or the other way in accordance
with his special needs. To tell him that his brain cells are in disorder
and that they can be cured will be the right thing for him who takes
only the introspective view of his suffering and is in despair because
his own will seems powerless to overcome those mental changes. For the
next patient, the opposite may be wiser. The belief that his brain is
ill may have induced him to give up effort of the will instead of
helping along by steady self-suggestion. He will be helped more if he
understands that his mind is working wrongly. But the full truth is that
both mind and body are in disorder; the function of the disturbed brain
cells accompanies the ineffective will, and to reënforce the will means
to bring into equilibrium again the disturbed brain cells. For the
psychotherapist the temptation of giving the attention to the mental
symptoms only is strong. The more firmly the physician sticks to the
standpoint of psychophysiology, the better he will see ailment and cure
in their right proportion.

This demand for the consideration of the whole personality, mind and
body, ought not to be influenced by the popular separation between
organic and functional diseases. If we call organic diseases of the mind
those in which the mental disturbance is the accompaniment of a brain
disturbance, and functional those in which no brain disturbance exists,
we leave entirely the ground of modern psychology. As soon as we
believe that the mind can be disturbed without a change in the functions
of the brain, we give away all that which has brought scientific order
into the study of psychological existence. Every mental disturbance
corresponds to a disorder in the brain's functions. But there cannot be
a change in the functions of the brain without a change in its
structure. Thus we must claim that all those so-called functional
disturbances like neurasthenia and hysteria, fixed ideas and obsessions,
phobias and dissociations of the personality, as well as the typical
insane states of the maniac or paranoiac have their basis in a
pathological change of the anatomical structure of the brain. This
postulate cannot be influenced by the fact that the microscope has been
unable to detect the character of most of these changes.

Of course all this does not exclude its being perfectly justifiable to
separate those diseases for which a definite destruction of the brain
parts can be detected, as in paralysis of the brain, from those where
that is impossible. We may also expect that those disturbances in the
brain which we cannot as yet make visible, may allow more easily an
organic repair and thus a restoration to the normal functions. Just as a
disjointed arm may be brought to function quickly again, a broken arm
slowly, an amputated arm never, each brain cell too may suffer lesions
which are reparable in different degrees. But it is evident that it
remains then an entirely empirical question whether the invisible damage
allows repair or not. We have no right to say that where the
destruction cannot be seen under the microscope there is no organic
change and the disturbance is therefore only a psychical one and can be
removed by mental means. All changes are physical and experience has to
decide whether they are accessible to psychological influences or not.
States like epilepsy may not allow any recognition of definite brain
destruction and are yet on the whole inaccessible to mental influence,
while many a brain disturbance with visible alterations, resulting
perhaps from anæmia or hyperæmia, may be caused to disappear. If on the
other hand we say that we can cure with psychotherapeutic means only the
functional brain diseases and define as functional simply those diseases
which can be cured by such means, we move, of course, in the most
obvious circle and yet just that is the too frequent fate of the
discussions in certain quarters.

Every psychical disturbance is organic inasmuch as it is based on a
molecular change which deranges the function. Some of these changes are
beyond restitution; some can be brought back to a well-working structure
by strictly physical agencies like drugs or electricity; others can be
repaired by physiological stimuli which reach directly the higher brain
cells through the sense organs and which we call psychical under one
aspect, but which certainly remain physiological influences from another
aspect. And these psychophysiological influences of the spoken words or
similar agencies are thus indeed for therapeutic effect entirely
coördinated with the douche and the bath and the electric current and
the opiate. It is a stimulation of certain brain cells, an inhibition of
certain others: a subtle apparatus which must be handled with careful
calculation of its microscopical causes and effects. That these words
from an entirely different point of view may mean a moral appeal and
have ethical value, point to moral and religious ideas and reënforce the
spiritual personality, lies entirely outside of the psychotherapeutic
calculation. As long as the curing of the patient is the aim, the faith
in God is not more valuable than the faith in the physician and the
moral appeal of no higher order than the influence through the galvanic
current. They come in question only as means to an end and they are
valuable only in so far as they reach the end. That they can be related
to an entirely different series of purposes, to the system of our moral
ideas, ought not to withdraw the attention of the psychotherapist from
his only aim, to cure the patient. The highest moral appeal may be even
a most unfit method of treatment and the religious emotion may just as
well do harm as good from the point of view of the physician.
Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the usual confusion of
standpoints.

V

SUGGESTION AND HYPNOTISM

Psychotherapy has now become for us the effort to repair the disturbed
equilibrium of human functions by influencing the mental life. It is
acknowledged on all sides that the most powerful of these influences is
that of suggestion. This is an influence which is most easily
misunderstood and which has most often become the starting point for
misleading theories. Before we enter into the study of the practical
effects of suggestion and the psychotherapeutic results, we must examine
this tool in the hand of the psychotherapist from a purely psychological
viewpoint. The patient may perhaps sometimes profit from suggestion the
more, the less he understands about its nature, but the physician will
always secure the better results, the more clearly he apprehends the
working of this subtle tool. Of course, that does not mean that any
psychology is able to explain the process of suggestion to a point where
all difficulties are removed, but at least the mysteries can be removed
and the effects can be linked with other well-known processes.

Let us be clear from the start that suggestion is certainly nothing
abnormal and exceptional, nothing which leads us away from our ordinary
life, nothing which brings us nearer to the great riddles of the
universe. There is no human life into which suggestion does not enter in
a hundred forms. Family life and education, law and business, public
life and politics, art and religion are carried by suggestion. A
suggestion is, we might say at first, an idea which has a power in our
mind to suppress the opposite idea. A suggestion is an idea which in
itself is not different from other ideas, but the way in which it takes
possession of the mind reduces the chances of any opposite ideas; it
inhibits them. It is indeed the best result of any successful education,
that the teachings have taken hold of the mind of the young in such a
way that all the opposite tendencies and impulses and wishes do not come
to development. The well-educated person does not need to participate in
a struggle between good and bad motives, for that which has been
impressed upon his mind does not allow the other side to come up at all.
Our life would be crowded with inner conflicts if education had not
secured for us from the start preponderance for the suggestions of our
educators.

The love of family and friends, of our country and our party are in the
same way such suggestions. We may hear arguments for the other side,
arguments which easily convince the man of the other party, but they do
not appeal to us: they are emasculated before they enter our minds; they
have no chance to overcome the resistance because suggestions stand in
their way. No argument will overwhelm the suggestion which religion has
settled in our inner life, and from this strongest suggestion which can
stand against any temptation of life small psychological steps lead down
to the little bits of suggestion with which our daily chance life is
over-flooded. Every advertisement in the newspaper, every display in the
shop-window, every warm intonation in the voice of our neighbor has its
suggestive power, that is, it brings its content in such a way to our
minds that the desire to do the opposite is weakened. We do buy the
object that we do not need, and we do follow the advice which we ought
to have reconsidered. And what would remain of art if it had not this
power of suggestion by which it comes to us and wins the victory over
every opposing idea? We believe the painter and we believe the novelist,
if their technique is good. We do not remember that the inventions of
their genius are contrary to our life experience; we feel sympathy with
the hero and do not care in the least that he has no real life. The
suggestion of art has inhibited in us every contrary idea.

Such daily experience shows us that suggestive power may belong to
different men in different degree. There are lawyers whose arguments and
whose presentation open our mind, it seems, to any suggestion: while
others leave us indifferent; we understand their idea, we follow their
thoughts, and yet we remain accessible to opposite influences. There are
teachers whose authority gives to every word such an impressiveness and
dignity that every opposite thought disappears, while others throw out
words which are forgotten. On the other hand, the readiness to accept
suggestions is evidently also quite different with different
individuals. From the most credulous to the stubborn, we have every
degree of suggestibility, the one impressed by the suggestive power of
any idea which is brought to his mind, the other always inclined to
distrust and to look over to the opposite argument. Such a stubborn mind
is indeed not only without inclination for suggestions, but it may
develop even a negative suggestibility; whatever it receives awakens an
instinctive impulse towards the opposite. Moreover we are all in
different degrees suggestible at different times and under various
conditions. Emotions reënforce our readiness to accept suggestions. Hope
and fear, love and jealousy give to the impression and the idea a power
to overwhelm the opposite idea, which otherwise might have influenced
our deliberation. Fatigue and intoxicants increase suggestibility very
strongly. To look out on a wider perspective, we may add at once that an
artificial increase of suggestibility is all which constitutes the state
of hypnotism.

At first, however, we want to understand the ordinary process of
suggestion in that normal form in which it enters into every hour of our
life and into every relation of our social intercourse. But if we begin
to examine the structure of the process, we can no longer be satisfied
with the vague reference to ideas and their opposites. What does it mean
after all if we speak of opposite ideas? Can we not entertain any ideas
peacefully together in our consciousness? From a logical standpoint,
ideas may contradict each other, but that refers to their meaning. As
mere bits of psychological experience, I may have any ideas together in
my consciousness. I can think summer and winter or day and night or
right and left or black and white or love and hate in one embracing
thought. As mere mental stuff, the one idea does not interfere with the
other. On the other hand, this is evident: I cannot will to turn to the
right and to turn to the left at the same time. There may be a wrangling
between those two impulses, but as soon as my will stands for the one,
the other is really excluded. Any action which I am starting to do thus
crowds out the impulse to the opposed action.

In the sphere of psychological facts, we have here indeed the only
relation between two happenings which necessarily involves an
opposition. We could never understand why one brain cell might not work
together with any other brain cell, but we do understand that nature
must provide for an apparatus by which the impulse to one action makes
the impulse to the opposite action ineffective. There is no action which
has not its definite opposite. The carrying out of any impulse involves
the suppression of the contrary impulse, and the impulse not to do an
action involves the suppression of the impulse to do it. When we spoke
of the relations of mind and brain, we mentioned that such a corelation
of mental centers indeed exists. Physiological experiments have
demonstrated that the activity of those centers which stimulate a
certain action reduce the excitability of those brain parts which awaken
the antagonistic action. As far as the world of actions is concerned,
the mechanism of the process of suggestion thus seems not inaccessible
to a physiological understanding.

Various ideas of movements to be carried out are struggling for control
in the cortex of the brain. That is the normal status which precedes any
decision. The channels of motor discharge are open for both
possibilities; we may turn to the right or to the left. Then the play of
associations begins. A larger and larger circle of ideas surrounds the
idea of the one and of the other goal. Those ideas awaken emotions. On
the one side may call our duty and on the other side our pleasure.
Larger and larger parts of the central content of our consciousness, of
our own personality, become involved; our principles and maxims, our
memories, our hopes and fears, enter into the battle until deeper strata
of the idea of ourselves enter into a firm association with the one
side, reënforcing, perhaps, the idea of the goal at the right. This
opens wide the channels of discharge for the movement to the right and
inhibits thereby the excitability of the center which leads to the
opposite action. The channel of discharge to the movement towards the
left becomes closed, the idea of that movement fades away and becomes
inhibited: we are moving towards the right. The outcome was the product
of our total personality.

But this result would have been different, if from the start the
channels of discharge had not been equally open for both possible
movements, and if thus the relative resistance to the impulse had not
been equal on both sides. If, for instance, we had gone from the given
point frequently to the left, as a result of the habit and training, the
impulse to the left would have found less nervous resistance. The
channels would have become widened by the repetition and the opposite
channels would have been somewhat closed by the lack of use. Or if
instead of such previous habit, we should see at the decisive moment
others turning to the left, the impression would have become the
starting point for a reaction of mere instinctive imitation. While we
might not have followed that imitative impulse at once, yet the channels
would have been widened, the discharge in the direction would have been
prepared by it, the resistance would have been lowered and the chances
for the opposite movement would have been decreased. Those people who
moved to the left gave us by their action the same kind of an impulse
which they would have furnished if they had begged us with words, or if
they had ordered us to follow them with authoritative firmness. In each
of these cases, the influence would have amounted to a suggestion.
Whether we watched the movements of other people or whether their words
made an impression on us, in either case the way became prepared for a
certain line of action and therefore the way for the opposite action
became blocked. The final outcome was thus no longer an entirely free
play of motor ideas, but there was a little inequality in play. The one
had from the start a better chance, the other was from the start
laboring under difficulties. The suggestion of actions is thus nothing
but making use of the antagonistic character in the nervous paths which
start from the motor centers. That all such phrases as the opening and
the closing, the widening and blocking, of channels of discharge are
only metaphors hardly needs special emphasis. Instead of such
comparisons, we ought rather to think of chemical processes which offer
various degrees of resistance to the propagation of the nervous
excitement.

We see from here the direction in which many psychotherapeutic efforts
must lie, efforts which are entirely within the limits of the daily
normal experience, and belong to the medical practice of every
physician, yes, to the helpful influence of every man in practical life.
The intemperate man may suffer from his inability to resist his desire
for whiskey. The idea of his visit to the saloon finds the channels of
discharge open. We argue with him, we tempt him by attractions which
lead to other ways, we suggest to him that he spend those evening hours
perhaps with friends or with books for which we awaken his interest; we
do it as impressively as we can, we appeal to his friendly feeling for
us; and if again the hour comes in which the desire for the artificial
stimulation sets in with a motor impulse towards the bottle, the
channels for discharge have now been blocked. The idea of the opposite
action arises, it associates itself with the emotions which we stirred
up in his mind, it associates itself with the respect for the adviser,
and thus new clusters of thought reënforce that idea of action which we
suggested, and this opposite line of action now finds a minimum
resistance because our appeal has opened beforehand the gate. The desire
for the book works itself out into action while the desire for the cup
finds increased resistance.

Just this is the kind of suggestion with which we correct faulty action
everywhere in our social circle; and yet small steps lead on from here
to the case where perhaps the desire for alcohol has reached that
pathological intensity in which the equilibrium is entirely disturbed
and cannot be repaired without suggestions of a much more powerful
character, given in a state of artificially increased suggestibility--in
hypnotism. The principle of opening certain channels of discharge for
the purpose of closing the opposite channels remains in the extreme case
the same as in the more ordinary cases. The impulse to drink is a
positive one, but the principle is not different where the impulse is
negative. A friend who comes from the quiet country may feel unable to
pass the busy square of the city. The fear of an accident holds back his
steps, he cannot give the impulse to walk through the crowded rush of
vehicles. Now either by words of advice, by persuasion or by showing the
way, we may apply our suggestion, we open the channels of discharge for
the necessary movements and thus decrease the excitability of those
centers in which nervous fear was playing. And again small steps lead
from here to the case of the psychasthenic sufferer whose phobia does
not allow him to cross any square and where reënforced suggestion has to
break open the ways for the walking movement when the square is reached.

Thus we are not far from a causal understanding of suggestive influences
wherever actions are concerned, where movements are to be reënforced or
to be suppressed and where antagonism of the motor paths is involved.
But that does not seem to lead us nearer to the much larger group of
states in which the whole suggestive process concerns apparently the
interplay of ideas alone, where not actions but impressions are
controlled by suggestion, where not impulses but thoughts are
strengthened or inhibited. Here lies the real psychophysical problem
which has been by far too much neglected in scientific psychology and
has almost been hidden and made to disappear in the wonderful accounts
of the hypnotists. But all those mysterious stories as to the
achievements of suggestion cannot help so long as we do not understand
the working of the process, and we shall have the better chance to
understand it the more we keep away from the uncanny and mysterious
results which refer to the most complex conditions, and rather seek to
analyze the state in its simplest forms and compare it with other simple
mental processes. The psychology of suggestion has suffered too much by
the fascination which its most complex forms exert on a trivial
curiosity.

Yet the problem of suggestion in the field of ideas stands after all not
isolated. Instead of connecting it with the weird reports of mystic
influence from man to man, let us rather link it with the simple
experience of attention. There is no pulse-beat of our life in which
attention does not play its little rôle. But does not attention share
with suggestion the characteristic feature that some contents of
consciousness are reënforced and others are suppressed? This negative,
this suppressing character of attention is not a chance by-product, it
is most essential. There is no attention without it. If I am studying, I
do not hear the conversation around me, and if I listen to the
conversation, my studies in hand become inhibited. If I enjoy the play
on the stage and give to it my full attention, my memories of the day's
work are suppressed; if I think of the happenings of the day, I am not
attentive to the play and hardly notice what is going on. The inhibited
impression may often disappear entirely. While I am reading I am not at
all aware of the tactual and muscular sensations in my legs, and if I am
completely absorbed by my book, I may not even notice that the bell
rings. In short, we have here as the most characteristic relation, just
as in suggestion, the fact that one mental state becomes vivid, and that
others are losing ground, become less vivid, are inhibited and perhaps
disappear entirely.

Of course, to point to the similarity between suggestion and attention
is not a real explanation. It may be answered that attention simply
offers the same difficulties once more. How can we explain in the
attention process the fact that one idea, the one attended to, becomes
vivid and that others evaporate? The difficulty evidently cannot be
removed by simply saying that only one sensorial process can be
developed in the brain at one time. The popular descriptions of
attention easily make it appear as if such were the solution of the
problem. If one sensorial brain part is intensely engaged, the remainder
of the brain is condemned to a kind of inactivity. Yet such a dogma is
hardly better than the old-fashioned one that the soul can have only one
idea at a time. We know too well now that the psychophysical system is
an extremely complex equilibrium of millions of elements. Thus every
change must be explained with reference to this complex manifold. Above
all, the facts simply contradict such an over-simple explanation,
inasmuch as it is not at all true that only one content of consciousness
can become vivid. Our attention does not focus upon one point at all but
may illuminate a large field and thus give vividness to various complex
groups. If I am thinking about a scientific problem, an abundance of
reminiscences of previous reading and imaginative ideas of possible
solutions, associative thoughts and conclusions are with equal vividness
before my mind and the forthcoming thought may be influenced by this
total combination. I have no right whatever to say that the idea of a
certain solution excludes there in my mind the consideration of the
books which I have read and of the discussions which I have heard.
Emotions may be superadded. In short, a world of mental states may be
held together by one act of attention. And new and ever new thoughts
are shooting in, and all still find place there in the field attended
to, while on the other hand my slight headache is inhibited and an
appointment is forgotten. At a gay banquet, my attention may be given to
the whole hall with all its color effects and its flowers, and to all
that the table offers and to the music from the orchestra and to the
jokes of my neighbors. It is not true that any one of those parts
suppresses the vividness of the others, they seem rather to maintain and
to help one another; and yet in the next moment, my neighbor may bring
me news which absorbs my mind entirely and leaves no room for the
flowers and the music and the meal. How far can psychology do justice to
these characteristics of attention?

There seems to be but one way. The attended-to idea does not exclude
every other idea, but it does exclude the opposite idea, and opposite to
each other is here again that pair of ideas which lead to opposite
actions, to opposite psychophysical attitudes. We must remember here the
psychomotor character of our brain processes which we so fully
discussed. We recognized the fundamental truth that there is no
sensorial state which is not at the same time the starting-point for
motor reaction. We recognized that the brain is by its whole
psychological development a great switchboard which transfers incoming
currents into outgoing ones and that its biological meaning lies in the
fact that it is the center piece of an arc which leads from the sense
organs to the muscles. We cannot conceive of those relations as complex
enough; we know, of course, that millions of nerve fibers lead from the
periphery to the highest psychophysical apparatus in the cortex of the
brain and that millions of fibers bring about the interrelation between
these central stations, but we must never forget that millions of fibers
also represent the outgoing paths and that they too lead down to lower
central motor instruments which are again in numberless corelations. Any
impression is thus a starting point for attitudes and reactions and it
is an empty abstraction to consider it otherwise. An idea is never,
psychophysically considered, the end of the process, it is always also a
beginning. No external action may follow, but the mental impulse to such
is nevertheless starting in the highest center.

If we look at the landscape, every single spot of color, reaching a
nerve fiber in our eye and finally a sensory cell in our brain, is there
the starting point for an impulse to make an eye movement in the
direction of the seen point. The eye may remain entirely quiet as the
impulse to move to the right and to the left, to move up and to move
down, may be equally strong, but those thousands of impulses work in the
motor paths and only their equilibrium results in the suppression of the
outer movement. With such motor scheme, we begin to understand the
selective process in attention. An impression may be accompanied by
other stimuli and associations, by thoughts and ideas, and thousands of
sensory excitements may thus arise in the cortex, but only those have a
chance for full vividness of development which coöperate in the motor
action already started. Those impressions which would lead to the
opposite actions have no chance because their motor paths are blocked
and their own full development is dependent upon their possibility of
expression. To close the path means to inhibit the idea which demands
such action. We can attend to a hundred thoughts together, if they all
lead to the same attitude and deed. We can look at the opera, can see
every singer and every singer's gown, can listen to every word, can have
the whole plot in mind, can hear the thousands of tones which come from
the orchestra; and yet combine all that in one act of attention, because
it all belongs to the same setting of our reactive apparatus. Whatever
the one wants is wanted by the others. But if at the same time our
neighbor speaks to us, we do not notice it; his words work as a stimulus
which demands an entirely different motor setting as answer. Therefore
the words remain unvivid and unnoticed.

To attend means therefore to bring about a motor setting by which the
object of attention finds open channels for discharge in action. Which
particular action is needed in the state of attention cannot be
doubtful. Attention demands those motor responses and those inner steps
by which the object of attention shows itself more fully and more
clearly. When we give attention to the picture we want to see more
details, when we give attention to the problem we want to recognize more
of the factors involved, when we give attention to the banquet we want
to grasp more of the pleasurable features. This aim of attention
involves that, as part of such reactions, the sense organs become
adjusted; we fixate the eyeball, we listen, and in consequence the
object itself becomes clearer, and through the easy passage into the
motor channels the whole impression becomes vivid. At the same time, all
those associations must be reënforced and become vivid too which lead to
the same action. On the other hand, the opening of the one passageway
closes the path to the opposite action and inhibits the impressions
which would interfere with our interest. Every act of attention becomes,
therefore, a complex distribution in the reënforcement and inhibition of
mental states.

Now let us come back to suggestion. It shares, we said, with attention,
the power to reënforce and to inhibit. But if we examine what is
involved in the suggestion of an idea, we find surely more than a mere
turning of the attention towards one idea and turning the attention away
from another idea. That which characterizes and constitutes suggestion
is a belief in the idea, an acceptance of the idea as real and the
dismissal of the opposite idea as unreal. Yes, we may say directly that
it is meaningless to speak of suggesting an idea; we suggest either an
action or, if no action is concerned, we suggest belief in an idea. If I
suggest to the fearful man at twilight that the willow-tree trunk by the
wayside is a man with a gun, I do not turn his attention to an abstract
idea of a robber nor do I simply awaken the visual impression of one,
but I make him believe that such an idea is there realized, that he
really sees the person. If I suggest to him that he hears distant bells
ringing or that he feels a slight headache, he may not be suggestible
enough to accept it, but if he accepts it he is not simply attending to
the idea which I propose but he is convinced of its real existence. The
same holds true with the negative; if I suggest to him that the slight
headache of which he complained has disappeared or that the smell which
he noticed has stopped, I do not simply invite him to think of the
absence of such sensations. It becomes for him a suggestion only if he
becomes convinced that these disturbances have now become unreal. The
same holds true for all those suggestions of ideas which belong to our
practical life, the suggestions which art imprints on our minds, or
which politics and religion impart. As long as we are under the
suggestion of the novelist, we really believe in the existence of the
heroine; we really believe in the validity of the political party
principle; it is not an argument to which we simply give our attention,
it becomes a suggestion only when the belief in its objective existence
controls our minds. We may say in general that suggestions which are not
suggestions of actions are without exception suggestions of belief.
Actions and beliefs are the only possible material of any suggestion.

Yet what else is a belief than a preparation for action? I may think of
an object without preparing myself for any particular line of behavior.
Here in the room I may think of rain or sunshine on the street as a mere
idea, but to know that it now really rains or shines means something
entirely different. It means a completely new setting in my present
attitude, a setting by which I am prepared to act along the one or the
other line, to take an umbrella or to take a straw hat, when I am to
leave the house. I may think of the door of this room as locked or
unlocked without transcending the mere sphere of imagination, but to
believe that it is the one or the other means a new setting in my motor
adjustments. If it is locked I know that I cannot leave the room without
a key. Every belief means the preparation for a definite line of action
and a new motor adjustment in the whole system of motor paths, an
adjustment by which my actions in future will be switched off at once
into particular paths. And there is theoretically no difference whether
my belief refers to the proposition that the door is locked or that a
God exists in Heaven.

But if every belief is such a new motor setting, then we are evidently
brought back to the mechanism which was essential for every suggestion
of action on the one side and for every process of attention on the
other side, namely, the mechanism of antagonistic movements. To prepare
ourselves for one line of action means to close beforehand the channels
of discharge for the opposite. The suggestible mind sees the man with a
gun on the wayside because he is preparing himself in his expectation
for the appropriate action; he is ready for the fight or ready to run
away, and every line of the tree trunk is apperceived with reference to
this motor setting. The smell, on the other hand, has disappeared under
the influence of the suggestion because a new motor adjustment has set
in, in which he is prepared to act as if there were no smell.

The difference between suggestion and attention lies thus only in this:
the motor response in attention aims towards a fuller clearness of the
idea, for instance, by fixating, listening, observing, searching; while
the motor response in suggestion aims towards the practical action in
which the object of the idea is accepted as real. In attention, we
change the object in making it clearer; in suggestion, we change
ourselves in adapting ourselves to the new situation in which we
believe. If you consider attention as a psychophysical process open to
physiological explanation, you have surely no reason to seek anything
mysterious in the process of suggestion; and no new principle is
involved, if we come from the effect of the smallest suggestive hint to
the complex and powerful suggestions which overwhelm the whole
personality.

The two great types of suggestion, the suggestion of actions and the
suggestion of ideas, have now come nearer together since we have seen
that the suggestion of ideas is really a suggestion of the practical
acceptance of ideas, and that means, of a preparation towards a certain
line of action. In the one case I suggest the idea of a certain action
and this motor idea leads to the action itself, and in the other case I
suggest a certain preparatory setting for action and that will lead to
the appropriate action whenever the time for action comes. Every
suggestion is thus ultimately a suggestion of activity. The most
effective suggestion for an action results, of course, if both methods
are combined, that is, if we suggest not only the will to perform the
action, but at the same time the belief that the end of the action will
be real. Suggestion reaches us usually from without. Yet there is again
no new principle involved, when the new motor setting results from one's
own associations and emotions. Then we speak of auto-suggestion. It is
the same difference which exists between the attention called forth
through an outer impression and the attention directed by our own will.
Loud noise demands our attention, and even a whispered word may awaken
associations which stir up the attention. In both cases the channels for
adjustment become opened without our intention. But if we are expecting
something of importance, if we start to watch a certain development and
to find something which we seek, we open the channels by our own effort
beforehand and produce our own settings thus through a voluntary
attention. In this way suggestion too may start from without,--by a
spoken word, by a movement, by a hint; or may start within us and may
give us our caprices and our prejudices.

We must not neglect one other feature of the suggestion. Not every
proposition to action or to belief can be called a suggestion. Essential
too remains the other side of it, the overcoming of the resistance. A
mere request, "Please hand me the book on the table," or a mere
communication, "It rains," may produce and will produce the fit motor
response, the movement towards handing over the book or opening of the
umbrella, and yet there may be no suggestive element involved. We have a
right to speak of suggestion only if a resistance is to be broken down,
that is, if the antagonistic impulse, or the motor setting for the
antagonistic action is relatively strong. If I say to the boy, "Hand me
the book," when he was anxious to hide the book from my eyes and thus
had the wish not to hand it to me and the tone of my request overwhelmed
his own intention, then to be sure suggestion is at work. The stronger
the resistance, the greater the degree of suggestive power which is
needed to overcome the motor setting. If I say to the normal man, "It
rains," while he sees the blue sky and the dry street, his impression
will be stronger than my suggestion; but if he is suggestible and I tell
him that it will rain, he may accept it and take an umbrella on his
walk, even if no indication makes a change of weather probable. The
present impression of the dry street was strong enough to resist the
suggestion, the imaginative idea of that which is to be expected in the
next hour was too weak, and was overwhelmed by the suggestion of the
weather prophecy.

It is clear that the whole suggestive effect, being one of a new motor
setting, depends thus entirely on the equilibrium of the personality
which receives the suggestion. Every element which reaches the mind
through sense organs or through associations must have influence in
helping the one or the other side, that is, in opening the channels of
action in the suggested direction or in the antagonistic one. The
results appear surprising only if we forget how endlessly complex this
psychomotor apparatus really is. If we disregard this complexity we may
easily have the feeling that one person has an unexplainable influence
over another, as if the will of the one could control in a mysterious
way the will of the other. But as soon as we see that every action is
the result of the coöperation of hundreds of thousands of psychomotor
impulses which are in definite relation to antagonistic energies, and
that the result depends upon the struggling and balancing of this most
complex apparatus, then we understand more easily how outer influences
may help the one or the other side to preponderance: as soon as the
balance turns to the one side, a completely new adjustment must set in.
And we understand especially that there is nowhere a sharp demarcation
line between receiving communications and receiving suggestions. By
small steps suggestion shades over into the ordinary exchange of ideas,
propositions, and impressions, just as attention shades over into a
neutral perception.

To be suggestible means thus to be provided with a psychophysical
apparatus in which new propositions for actions close easily the
channels for antagonistic activity. Such an apparatus carries with it
the disadvantage that the personality may too easily be guided contrary
to his own knowledge and experience. He will be carried away by every
new proposition and will accept beliefs which his own thoughts ought to
reject. On the other hand, it has the advantage that he will be open to
new ideas, be ready to follow good examples, never stubbornly close his
mind to the unaccustomed and the uncomfortable. It is easy to determine
the degree of suggestibility. Take this case. I draw on the blackboard
of a classroom two circles of an equal size, and write in the one the
number fourteen and in the other the number eighty-nine, and ask the
children which is the larger circle. The suggestible ones will believe
that the circle with the higher number in it is really larger than the
other, the unsuggestible children will follow the advice of their senses
and call both equal, and there may be a few children with negative
suggestibility who would call the circle with the higher number the
smaller circle. What happened to the suggestible ones was that the
higher number brought about a motor attitude which faced that whole
complex as being more imposing and this new motor setting was with them
strong enough to overcome the motor adjustment which the circles alone
produced. Such experiments of the psychological laboratory can be varied
a thousandfold, and it might not be unwise to introduce them into many
practical fields. Everybody knows for instance how much may depend upon
the suggestibility of the witness in court. The suggestible witness
believes himself to have seen and heard what the lawyer suggests. The
memory picture which such a witness has in mind offers, of course, much
less resistance to the opposite action and attitude and belief than the
immediate impression. If I show the witness a colored picture of a room
and close the book and ask him whether there were three or four chairs
in the picture and whether the curtain was green or red, the suggestible
man will decide for one or the other proposition, even if there were
only two chairs and a blue curtain. The perception would have resisted
the suggestion, the fading memory image cannot resist it. Thus
suggestibility is really a practical factor in every walk of life. And
it is in the highest interests of psychotherapy that this intimate
connection between suggestion and ordinary talk and intercourse, between
suggestion and ordinary choice of motives, between suggestion and
attention be steadily kept in view and that suggestion is not
transformed into a kind of mysterious agency.

To be sure, the importance of suggestion for psychotherapy is not
confined to these suggestive processes of daily life. They play a rôle
there, as we shall see, and we shall claim that even the mere presence
of the physician may have its suggestive power and so may every remedy
which he applies. But no doubt many of his suggestive effects depend on
a power which far transcends the suggestions of our daily life. Yet the
psychologist must insist again that no new principle is involved, that
even in the strongest forms of suggestion, in hypnotism, nothing depends
upon any special influence emanating from the mind of the hypnotizer or
upon any special power flowing over from brain to brain; but that
everything results from the change of equilibrium in the psychomotor
processes of the hypnotized, and thus upon the interplay of his own
mental functions. All that is needed is a higher degree of
suggestibility than is found in the normal life. In a more suggestible
mind even the direct sense impressions may be overwhelmed by the
proposition for an untrue belief and the strongest desires may yield to
the new propositions of action. This library may then become a garden
where the hypnotized person picks flowers from the floor, and the wise
man stands on one leg and repeats the alphabet, if the hypnotizer asks
him to do so. Let us consider at first this extreme case. By a few
manipulations I have brought a man into a deep hypnotic state. He is now
unable to resist any suggestion, either suggestion of impulse or
suggestion of belief, and as every one of the hypnotic phenomena can be
explained in this way, we may claim that the hypnotic state is in its
very nature a state of reënforced suggestibility. Whether I say, "You
will not move your arm," or whether I say, "You cannot move your arm,"
awakening in the one case the impulse to the suppression of the
movement, in the other case the belief in the impossibility of the
movement, in either case the result is the same; the arm remains stiff
and any effort of his to move it is inhibited. I may go to the extreme
and tell him that our friend by my side has left the room; he will not
see him, he will not even hear a word which the friend speaks. If I take
a hat in my hand and put it on the friend's head, the hat appears to
hang in the air. Every impression of sound or sight or touch which comes
from the friend is entirely inhibited. The direct sense impression of
eye and ear is thus completely overwhelmed by the suggestion.

What has happened? Are the manipulations which I applied sufficient to
produce the changes by their physical influence? Certainly not; they are
of the most different kinds and yet all may have the same effect.
Perhaps I may have used the easy method of making the subject stare at a
shining button held in front of his forehead. Or I may have used slight
tactual impressions, while he was lying with closed eyes, or I may have
produced the abnormal state by monotonous noises of falling waterdrops,
or I may have simply spoken to him and asked him to think of sleep and
to relax and to feel tired, while I held my hand on his forehead or
while I held his hand in mine. Or I may have relied upon mild talking
without touching him at all; and yet every time the result was reached
in the same degree. There is thus certainly no special physical energy
which like a magnetic force flows over. It cannot even be said that my
will is engaged. I have often hypnotized without even thinking of the
subject before me, going through adjusted manipulations while my
thoughts were engaged in something else. I have even hypnotized over the
telephone; and a written note may be substituted with the same result. I
write to the patient that two minutes after receiving this letter by
mail, he will fall into hypnotic sleep. The effect sets in; and yet at
that time, I may not remember sending the note at all.

It is thus entirely evident that the hypnotic effect results only from
the mental conditions of the subject. Whatever may stimulate his mind
to the right kind of reaction will produce the desired result. The
increased suggestibility thus sets in by his own imagination which may
be stirred up by slight visual or tactual or acoustic stimuli or by
monotonous words or by feelings of relaxation and especially by words
which encourage sleep. But just because it is the play of his own
imagination, the most essential factor certainly is the will and
expectation of the subject. No one can really be hypnotized against his
own will. And to expect strong hypnotic effect from a certain hypnotist
is often in itself sufficient to produce hypnotic sleep. Thus there is
no special personal power necessary to produce hypnotism. Everybody can
hypnotize. And almost with the same sweeping statement it may be said
everybody can be hypnotized, provided that he is willing to enter into
this play of imagination. The young child or the insane person is
therefore unfit.

Of course, not everybody can be hypnotized to the same degree. Just as
the normal suggestibility showed itself very different with different
persons, the degree of artificial reënforcement varies still more.
Practically everybody can be brought to that breakdown of the
resistance in which he can no longer open the eyes against the order of
the hypnotist, but rather few can be brought to the point of seeing
extended hallucinations, or accepting the disappearance of persons who
are speaking, or of yielding to the impulse to a dangerous action. The
highest reported degree, in which even criminal actions are performed
by honest men, exists in my opinion only in the imagination of
amateurs; it is certainly not difficult to produce sham crimes for
performance sake, with paper daggers and toy pistols, but that is no
proof at all that the hypnotized person would commit a crime under
conditions under which he has the conviction that he faces a real
criminal situation. But if we abstract from real crime, we certainly
have to acknowledge that actions can be performed which appear in
striking contrast with the habits and character of the normal
personality, upset his knowledge, and are based on beliefs which would
be immediately rejected under ordinary conditions. These higher degrees
of hypnotic state are easily followed by complete loss of memory for all
that happened during the abnormal state.

How have we to interpret such a surprising alteration of mind? It lies
near to compare it with sleep. The brain seems powerless to produce its
normal ideas, the associations do not arise, the normal impulses have
disappeared and a general ineffectiveness has set in; in short, the
brain cells seem unable to function. Of course, the explanation of sleep
itself may offer difficulties. Is it a chemical substance which poisons
the brain during the sleep, or are the brain cells contracted so that
the excitement cannot run over from the branches of one nerve cell into
those of another? Or are the blood-vessels contracted so that an anæmic
state makes their normal function impossible? But whatever the physical
condition of sleep may be, have we really a right to emphasize the
similarity between sleep and hypnosis? After all that we have discussed,
we ought rather to recognize that the hypnotic state too comes much
nearer to the process of attention than to the process of sleep. We saw
that in every act of attention the process of inhibition is essential.
All that is not in harmony with the attended idea is suppressed. Yet we
should hesitate to say that in attention parts of our brain are asleep.

We should feel reluctance to group such inhibition together with sleep
because it would be a sleep which at any moment can pass from one part
of the brain to others and which certainly leaves at every moment most
of the cell groups unaffected. We saw that attention does not at all
focus on one narrow point, but that an abundance of impressions, of
ideas and associations, of thoughts and emotions can enter the field of
attention, if they all lead to one and the same motor attitude, and that
only the one part is inhibited which involves the opposite action. Such
a jumping sleep which at every moment selects a special part would be,
of course, just the contrary of that which characterizes the sleep state
of the fatigued brain. But exactly these characteristics of attention
belong to hypnotism too. It is not true that the mind of the hypnotized
is asleep and that perhaps only one or the other idea can be pushed into
his mind. On the contrary, his mind is open to an abundance of ideas,
just as in the normal state. If I tell him that this is a landscape in
Switzerland, he sees at once the mountains and the lakes, and his mind
provides all the details of his reminiscences, and his imagination
furnishes plenty of additions. His whole mind is awake; the feelings and
emotions and volitions, the memories and judgments and thoughts are
rushing on, and only that is excluded which demands a contrary attitude.
This selective process stands decidedly in the center of the hypnotic
experience and makes it very doubtful whether we are psychophysically on
the right track, if we make much of the slight similarity between
hypnosis and sleep.

This has nothing to do with the fact that hypnosis is best brought about
by suggesting the idea of sleep, that is, the belief that sleep will
set in. This belief is indeed effective in removing all the ideas
which are awake in the mind which would interfere with the willingness
to submit to the suggestions of the hypnotizer. But the fact that
belief in sleep and expectation of sleep bring with them the hypnotic
state is not a proof that the hypnotic state itself is sleep. Even
the mental experiences which can remain in sleep, the dreams, are
characteristically different from the hypnotic experience. Thus the
dreams show that unselective awakening of ideas which is to be expected
from a general decrease of functioning. The hypnotic variation is
characterized just by its selective narrowing of consciousness. For the
same reason, hypnotism is strikingly different from such diseases of the
mind as dementia. Certainly in dementia too, many associations are cut
off, but it is not a selective inhibition, it is a haphazard destruction
resulting from the degeneration in the brain.

The fundamental principle of the hypnotic state lies in its selective
character. Inhibited and cut off are those states which are antagonistic
to the beliefs in the suggested ideas, and as their antagonism consists
in their connection with opposite actions, the whole is again a question
of motor setting. No doubt, such new motor setting can precede the
normal sleep too; thus the sleeper may be insensitive to any surrounding
noises, but perhaps awake at the slightest call from a patient who is
intrusted to his care. In that case, one special feature of hypnotism is
superadded to sleep but the sleep itself is not hypnotic. Again sleep
may go over into a state which shares many characteristic features with
hypnotism, that is, somnambulism, and it may be said with a certain
truth that hypnotism is artificial somnambulism. But somnambulism, while
arising in sleep, is not at all a feature of sleep.

While sleep is characterized by a decrease of sensitiveness and of
selective powers, the selective process of hypnotism rather reënforces
sensitiveness and memory in every field which is covered by the
suggestive influence. Stimuli may become noticeable which the normal man
is unable to perceive, and long-forgotten experiences which seem
inaccessible to the search of the waking mind may reproduce themselves
and may vividly enter consciousness. Again we have there symptoms which
rather characterize the state of over-attention than the state of sleep.
We might add further that we know states with all the characteristics of
hypnotism in which even the subjective idea of sleep is entirely
absent, for instance, all those which are usually called states of
fascination. A certain shining light or a glimpse of an uncanny eye may
startle and upset the imagination of the subject and throw him into a
state of abnormally increased suggestibility. It is well known that
whole epidemics of such captivation have occurred and have resulted in
hysterias of the masses in which the subjects become the slaves of their
impulse, perhaps to imitate what they see or hear, or to realize ideas
in which they believe without logical warrant. They surely are not
asleep, are not even partially asleep. Every center of their brains
would be ready to work, if the captivated attention were not forcing the
mind in one direction and selectively suppressing every impulse to
opposite actions. The developed hypnotism finally shades off into
innumerable states of hypnoid character in which the sleeplike symptoms
are entirely in the background.

Thus the increased suggestibility of the hypnotic state will result not
from a partial sleeplike decrease of functioning but the decrease of
function is a motor inhibition which results from over-attention. In the
ordinary attention, our motor setting secures only an increase in
clearness and vividness of the attended ideas, but in an abnormal
over-attention the new motor setting produces a complete acceptance with
all its consequences. Abnormal or heightened attention thus goes
directly over into the belief and into the impulse without resistance.
There is no hypnotism which does not contain from the first stage this
definite relation to certain objects of attention, usually to a
particular person. All the manipulations, passes, fixation, monotonous
speaking, and so on narrow the contents of consciousness but hold the
idea of the hypnotizing person steadily in the center of attention. The
awakened expectation of sleep, the associated feeling of tiredness all
help to cut off attention from the remainder of the world, but as no
real sleep sets in, this cutting off from the remainder reënforces the
focusing of attention on the one central idea of the hypnotizing
personality. Every word and every movement of this personality become
therefore absorbed with that over-attention which leads at once from a
mere perceiving and grasping to a complete sinking into the suggested
idea with the suppression of all opposites, and thus to a blind
acceptance and belief. We saw before that such belief is indeed nothing
else but a motor setting in which certain ways of action are prepared.
We are to think in accordance with the belief in the suggested idea and
the channels for discharge in the opposite direction are closed. Even
the ordinary life shows us everywhere that the step from attention to
belief is a short one. The effort to grasp the object clearly works as a
suggestion to accept that which we are seeking as really existing, and
that from which we are to abstract and which we are to rule out through
our attention, we believe to be non-existent. The prestidigitator does
his tricks in order to sidetrack our attention, but he succeeds in
making us believe that we see or do not see whatever he wishes.

That the motor setting alone determines those changes and that a real
sleeplike inability of the centers does not set in, can also be
demonstrated by the results of later hypnotizations. I ask my hypnotized
subject not to perceive the friend in the room; he is indeed unable to
see him or to hear him. Yet his visual and acoustic centers are not
impaired, the defect is only selective, inasmuch as he sees me, the
hypnotizer, and not the friend. But even this selection inhibits only
the attitude and not the sensorial excitement. If I hypnotize him again
to-morrow and suggest to him now to remember all that the friend did and
said during yesterday's meeting, he is able to report correctly the
sense impressions which he got, which were inhibited only as long as
they contradicted the suggestion, but now rush to consciousness as soon
as the suggestion is reversed. As a matter of course, he must therefore
have received impressions through eye and ear in his hypnotic sleep of
yesterday from all that happened, only he was not aware of it because
the channels of the accepting attitude were blocked.

As soon as the over-attention has produced the acceptance of the belief,
all further effects are automatic and necessary. If I tell the
hypnotized person that he cannot speak and he absorbs this proposition,
with that completeness in which he accepts it as a fact, not speaking
itself unavoidably results. The motor ideas with which the speech
movement has to start are cut off and the subject yields passively to
the fate that he cannot intonate his voice. Thus a special influence on
the will is in no way involved. If the idea is accepted, and that means,
if the preparatory setting for the action has been completed, the ideas
of opposite activity must remain ineffective; the suggested idea must
discharge itself in action without resistance. As a matter of course the
new line of action will then surround itself with its own associations
and will thus give to the subject the impression that he is acting from
his own motives. As soon as the psychophysical principles are
understood, there is indeed no difficulty in going from the simplest
experience to those spectacular ones where we may suggest to the
profoundly hypnotized person that he is a little child or that he is
George Washington. In the one case, he will speak and cry and play and
write as in his present imagination a child would behave; in the other
case, he will pose in an attitude which he may have seen in a picture of
Washington. There is nothing mysterious and his utterances are
completely dependent upon his own ideas, which may be very different
from the real wisdom of a Washington and the real unwisdom of a child. I
may suggest to him to be the Czar, by that he will not become able to
speak Russian. In the same way I may suggest changes of the
surroundings; he may take my room for the river upon which he paddles
his canoe, or for the orchard in which he picks apples from my
bookshelves.

Finally there is no new principle involved, if the action which is
prepared by any belief has to set in after the awaking from hypnotic
sleep, the so-called post-hypnotic suggestion. As a matter of course,
just these have an eminent value for psychotherapy. I may suggest to-day
that the subject will overcome to-morrow his desire for the morphine
injection, or that he will feel to-night the restfulness which will
overcome his insomnia. But if the suggestion of an idea means belief,
and if belief means a preparation for action, we have indeed no new
factor before us if the action for which we prepare the subject is from
the start related to a definite time. If we do not link it with the
consciousness of a special time or of a special occasion which will
occur later, the suggestion soon fades away. That my library is an
orchard is forgotten perhaps within ten minutes, if I have not come back
to it in the conversation. But if I say that after awaking as soon as I
shall knock on my desk three times, you will be in the orchard again,
the psychophysical apparatus is prepared, a new setting has set in, the
three knocks will bring about the complete transformation. In short the
difficulties disappear as soon as we are consistent in interpreting all
suggestive influences as changes in the motor setting and as the result
of the antagonistic character of all of our motor paths.

We say the difficulties disappear. Of course, that is meant in a
relative sense only. It means essentially that we are able to bring the
complex state of hypnotism down to the similar state of attention and
motor adjustment, but of course we must not forget that we are far from
a satisfactory explanation of the process in attention itself. We know
that the opening of motor channels in one direction somewhat closes the
channels for discharge in the opposite direction, but what mechanism
does that work is still very obscure. Whichever principle of
hypothetical explanation we might prefer, it certainly leads to
difficulties in view of the extreme complexity of attention in states of
suggestion and hypnotism. We might think of a mechanism which through
the medium of the finest blood-vessels should produce a localized anæmia
in those centers which lead to the antagonistic action. Or we might
fancy that by extremely subtle machinery the resistance is increased in
those tissues which lie between the various neurons, or we might even
think of toxic and antitoxic processes in the cerebral regions; and any
day may open entirely new ways of explanation. We may add that even if
the mechanism of attention were completely explained, we are also still
far from understanding the physiological changes which go on in the
sphere of the blood-vessels or of the glands and the internal organs. We
understand easily that the idea of the subject that he cannot move his
arm keeps the arm stiff; but that his idea to blush really dilates the
blood-vessels of his cheek is much less open to our causal
understanding; still less that in very exceptional cases perhaps a part
of the skin becomes inflamed, if we make believe that we touch it with a
glowing iron. And yet here too we see that we move in the same direction
and that we have to explain these exceptional and bewildering results by
comparing them with the simpler and simpler forms, that the process of
attention contains all the germs for the whole development.

In claiming that hypnotism depends upon the over-attention to the
hypnotizing person, we admit that the increased suggestibility belongs
entirely to suggestions which come from without. Only that which at
least takes its starting point from the words or the movements of the
hypnotizer finds over-sensitive suggestibility. Ideas which arise merely
from the associations of the subject himself have no especially
favorable chance for acceptance. But surely we also know states in which
the suggestibility for certain of one's own ideas is abnormally
increased. Great individual differences exist in that respect in normal
life. There are normal hypochondriacs who believe that they feel the
symptoms of widely different diseases under the influence of their own
ideas, and others who are torturing themselves with fears on account of
unjustified beliefs. But the abnormal increase of suggestibility
parallel to that of hypnotism for suggestions from without exists for
suggestions from within, mainly in nervous diseases, especially in
neurasthenic, hysteric, and psychasthenic states. Within certain limits,
we might almost say that this increase of suggestibility for
autosuggestion is the fundamental characteristic of these diseases, just
as increase of suggestibility for heterosuggestions characterizes
hypnotism.

Especially in earlier times, the theory was often proposed that hypnosis
is an artificial hysteria. Such a view is untenable to-day; but that
hysteria too shows abundant effects of increased suggestibility is
correctly indicated by such a theory. The hysteric patient may by any
chance pick up the idea that her right arm is paralyzed or is
anaesthetic and the idea at once transforms itself into a belief and the
belief clings to her like an obsession and produces the effect that she
is unable to move the arm or that she does not feel a pinprick on the
skin. These autosuggestions may take a firmer hold of the mind than any
suggestions from without, but surely such openness to selfimplanted
beliefs must be acknowledged as symptomatic of disease, while hypnosis
with its impositions can be broken off at any moment and thus should no
more be classed among the diseases than are sleep and dreams. The
hysteric or psychasthenic autosuggestion resists the mere will of
breaking it off. Here, therefore, is the classical ground for strong
mental counterinfluences, that is, for psychotherapeutic treatment.
Experience shows that the strongest chance for the development of such
autosuggestive beliefs exists wherever an emotional disposition is
favorable to the arriving belief. But emotion too is after all
fundamentally a motor reaction. The whole meaning of emotion in the
biological sense is that it focuses the actions of man into one channel,
cutting off completely all the other impulses and incipient actions.
Emotion is therefore for the expressions of man what attention is for
the impressions. An emotional disposition means thus in every case a
certain motor setting by which transition to certain actions is
facilitated. It is thus only natural that a belief can settle the more
easily, the more it is favored by an emotional disposition, as the motor
setting for the one must prepare the other. Hypnosis and hysteria thus
represent the highest degrees of suggestibility, the one artificial, the
other pathological; the one for suggestions from without, the other for
suggestions from within. But between these two and the normal state
there lie numberless steps of transition. The normal variations
themselves may go to a limit where they overlap the abnormal artificial
product, that is, the suggestibility of many normal persons may reach a
degree in which they accept beliefs hardly acceptable to other persons
in mild hypnotic condition. Thus there is no sharp demarcation between
suggestions in a waking state and suggestions in a hypnoid state. And
the expectation of coming under powerful influence may produce a
sufficient change in the motor setting to realize any wonders. Moreover
probably every physician who has a long experience in hypnotizing has
found that his confidence in the effectiveness of the deep hypnotic
states has been slowly diminished, while his belief in the surprising
results of slight hypnotization and of hypnoid states has steadily grown
and has encouraged him in his psychotherapeutic efforts.

VI

THE SUBCONSCIOUS

The story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words: there is
none. But it may need many more words to make clear what that means, and
to show where the misunderstanding of those who give to the subconscious
almost the chief rôle in the mental performance sets in. The psychology
of suggestion, for instance, which we have now fully discussed without
even mentioning the word subconscious, figures in most popular books in
the treatises of both physicians and ministers as a wonderful dominance
of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind alone receives the
suggestions and makes them effective, the subconscious mind controls the
suggestive processes in consciousness, and the subconscious mind comes
into the foreground and takes entire hold of the situation when the
hypnotic state sets in.

But we are always assured that there is no need of turning to the
mystery of suggestion and hypnotism to find that uncanny subpersonality
in us. We try to remember a name, or we think of the solution of a
problem; what we are seeking does not come to consciousness and now we
turn to other things; and suddenly the name flashes up in our mind or
the solution of the problem becomes clear to us. Who can doubt that the
subconscious mind has performed the act? While our attention was given
over to other questions, the subconscious mind took up the search and
troubled itself with the problem and neatly performed what our conscious
mind was unable to produce. Moreover in every situation we are
performing a thousand useful and well-adapted acts with our body without
thinking of the end and aim. What else but the subconscious mind directs
our steps, controls our movements, and adjusts our life to its
surroundings? And is not every memory picture, every reminiscence of
earlier experiences a sufficient proof that the subconscious mind holds
its own? The poem which we learned years ago did not remain somewhere
lingering in our consciousness, and if we can repeat it today, it must
be because our subconscious mind has kept it carefully in its store and
is ready to supply us when consciousness has need for it.

Surely if we think how this, our subconscious mind, is able to hold all
our memories and all our learning, and how it transacts all the work of
controlling our useful actions and of bringing up the right ideas, we
may well acknowledge that compared with it our conscious life is rather
a small part. It is as with the iceberg in the ocean; we know that only
a small part is visible above the surface of the water and a ten times
larger mountain swims below the sea. It seems, therefore, only logical
to attach this whole subconscious mental life to a special subconscious
personality. Then we come to the popular theory of the two minds in us,
the upper and the lower, of which we can hardly doubt that the lower one
has on the whole the larger part of the business to perform. And we
certainly have no right to give to the word lower mind the side-meaning
that the activity is of a lower order. The most brilliant thoughts of
the genius are not manufactured in his upper consciousness, they spring
suddenly into his mind, their whole creation belongs thus to the
assiduous work of the subconscious neighbor. There the inventor and
discoverer gets his guidance, there the poet gets his inspiration, there
the religious mind gets its beliefs. In short, the constitution of the
mental state allows on the whole to the upper consciousness a rather
decorative part while the real work is left for the lower house.

Yet it must be acknowledged that the scholars somewhat disagree as to
the dignity of the lower mind. Considering the usually accepted fact
that in hypnotism the lower mind comes entirely over the surface, just
these hypnotic events can indeed suggest two different views of the
subconscious and this doubleness is reënforced if we still add the
entertaining material which comes to light by the automatic writing of
mediums in their trance. The hypnotized person is ready to perform any
foolishness, is not influenced by any considerations of tact and taste
and wisdom and respect, and thus some of the chief believers in the
subconscious personality stick to the diagnosis that the lower mind in
us which shows up in hypnotism is a rather brutal, stupid, lazy,
cowardly, immoral creature which ordinarily rather deserves to be
subdued by our noble and wise upper personality. And the automatic
writings of the mediums indorse this disrespectful view, for it is
difficult to gather more idiotic slang than the emanations of these
letters of the planchette. On the other hand, the hypnotized person
shows an increase of sensitiveness and hyperæsthesia in which perhaps
optical impressions or smells may be noticed which the ordinary man
cannot perceive. Moreover the memory of the hypnotized is, as we saw,
abnormally sharpened. Entirely forgotten experiences may awake again.
The same holds true for the hysteric in whom also, of course, the
subconscious takes hold of the inner life. Thus it seems entirely safe
to say that the powers of the subconscious personality far surpass those
of the upper conscious fellow, and that agrees with all those facts as
to the subconscious origin of the work of the genius. Further, has it
not been found again and again that the hypnotized and the hysteric
cannot only remember long-forgotten parts of the past but have
telepathic knowledge for distant events and even mysterious premonitions
of the field of occurrences of the future?

Hypnotism is essentially the same as the old mesmerism, and mesmerism
was widely acknowledged as clairvoyance, and all that harmonizes again
with the experiences of the mediums whose subconscious mind in trance
enters into contact with the spirits of the dead. The subconscious
personality is thus really a metaphysical power which transcends the
limitations of the earthly person altogether and has steady connection
with the endless world of spirit and the inner soul of the universe.
Most popular books, it is true, do not demand from their readers the
choice between the one or the other type of the lower personality,
between that brutal, vicious, ignorant creature and that far-seeing,
inspired, powerful soul. They simply mix the two and adapt the special
faculties of this underground man to the special requirements of the
particular chapter, the subconscious being unusually wise or unusually
stupid in accordance with the special facts which are just then to be
explained. Even that does not always settle all difficulties. They may
discover, for instance, that the subconscious mind with which we deal in
the hypnotized person has again itself a subconsciousness. If we tell
the hypnotized person not to see a certain picture on the wall, this
subconscious personality perceives the whole room with the exception of
the picture. Yet after all someone sees this picture, because if we
hypnotize him the next time and ask him what the picture contained, he
now knows its contents. Thus they must have been recognized in a
sub-subconsciousness, and we therefore come to a personality which lives
on a floor still below the basement. But experiment can demonstrate that
even this most hidden personality has still its secrets which are handed
downwards. In short, we finally have not merely two but a number of
personalities in us.

But now let us leave these fantasies of psychological fiction. Let us
turn to the concrete facts, let us see them in the spirit of modern
scientific psychology, let us try to explain them in harmony with the
principles of psychological explanation, and let us discriminate the
various groups of facts which have led to that easy-going hypothesis of
the subconscious. Discrimination indeed is needed, as it would be
impossible to bring the whole manifold of facts under one formula, but
there is certainly no unification reached by simply putting the same
label on all the varieties and behaving as if they are all at once
explained when they are called the functions of the subconscious. Two
large groups may be separated. Facts are referred to the subconscious
mind which do not belong to the mind at all, neither to a conscious nor
to a subconscious one, but which are simply processes in the physical
organism; and secondly, facts are referred to the subconscious mind
which go on in the conscious mind but which are abnormally connected.
Thus the subconscious mental facts are either not mental but
physiological, or mental but not subconscious.

What does the scientific psychologist really mean by consciousness? We
must now think back to our discussion of the principles which control
the fundamental conceptions of modern psychology. We saw clearly that
the psychology which is a descriptive and explanatory science of mental
phenomena can by no means have the ambition to be a full interpretation
of the inner reality. Our inner life, we saw, is not a series of
phenomena, is not a chain of objects which we are aware of and which we
therefore can describe, and which finally we can explain. But in its
living reality, we saw that it is purposive, has a meaning and aim, is
will and intention, and can thus be understood in its true character,
not by describing and explaining it but by interpreting it and
appreciating it. This is the life attitude towards personalities when we
deal man to man. We do not at first consider ourselves or our fellows as
mental objects to be explained but always as subjects to be understood
in their meaning. If we pass from this primary attitude to the attitude
of the scientific psychologist we gain, as we saw, an artificial
perspective. We must consider then our inner experience of ourselves
with all our states as a series of objects made up of elements connected
by law. Instead of the real things which in our real life are objects of
will and purpose, tools and means for us, the psychologist knows only
objects of awareness, objects which have no meaning, but which simply
exist and which are no longer related to a will but are connected with
other objects as causes and effects. Now we deal no longer with the
chairs and tables before us but from a psychological point of view they
become perceptive ideas of chairs and tables, ideas which are not in the
room but in our own minds. While these objects of our will and of our
personality become mere ideas, our will and personality themselves
become, too, a series of phenomena. Our self is now no longer the
purposive will but is that group of sensations and ideas which clusters
about the perception of our organism and its actions; in short, our
self itself becomes an object of awareness.

Our whole inner experience thus becomes a manifold of objects. Our self
and the actions of our self are thus alike for the psychologist mere
phenomena, mere objects which are perceived. Will and emotion, memory
idea and thought--they all are now passing appearances like the sunshine
and rain, the flowers and waves. By this transformation the immediate
will character of real life is given up, but instead of it a system of
objects is gained, that allows description and explanation. If we are to
deal at all with inner life not from a purposive but from a causal point
of view, we are obliged to admit this reconstruction. Without it we
cannot have any science of the mind, without it we can understand the
intentions of our neighbor and appreciate the truth and morality of his
meanings but we cannot causally explain his experiences or determine
which effects are to be expected. It is thus not an arbitrary
substitution but a procedure just as necessary and logically obligatory
as the work of the chemist who substitutes trillions of invisible atoms
for the glass of water which he drinks. The possibility of causal
explanation of the successive facts demands this remolding of the outer
and of the inner world. We have discussed that before and now only have
to draw the consequences.

Thus for the psychologist the mental world is a system of mental
objects. To be an object means of course to be object of some subject
which is aware of it. What else could it mean to exist at all as object
if not that it is given to some possible subject? But the world of
objects is twofold; we have not only the mental objects of the
psychologist but also the physical objects of the naturalist. Science
must characterize the difference between those two and we pointed once
before to the only fundamental difference. Physical objects are those
which are possible objects of awareness for every subject; psychical
objects are those which are possible objects of awareness for one
subject only. The tree which I see is as physical tree object for every
man, it is the same tree which you and I see; my psychical perception of
the tree is object for one subject only. My perception can never be your
perception. Our perceptions may agree but each has his own. As to the
physical objects, we can entirely abstract from such reference to the
subjects. We say simply: the tree exists or is part of nature; and only
the philosopher is aware that we silently mean by it that it exists for
every subject and that it is therefore not necessary to refer to any
particular subject. But the perception of the tree which is either your
idea or my idea evidently gets its existence only if it is referred and
attached to a particular subject which is aware of it. Such subject of
awareness is that which the psychologist calls consciousness and all the
ideas and volitions and emotions and sensations and images which make up
the mental life are then contents of the consciousness or objects of the
consciousness. To have psychical existence at all means thus to be
object of awareness for a consciousness. Something psychical which
simply exists but is not object of consciousness is therefore an inner
contradiction. Consciousness is the presupposition for the existence of
the psychical objects. Psychical objects which enjoy their existence
below consciousness are thus as impossible as a wooden piece of iron.

If consciousness is nothing but the subject of awareness for the
individual objects, we see at once certain consequences which are too
often forgotten in the popular, haphazard psychology. In the scientific
system of psychology, consciousness has for instance nothing whatever to
perform, that is, consciousness itself is in no way active. The active
personality of real life has been left behind and has itself been
transformed into that self which is merely content of consciousness. The
person who acts and performs the deeds of our life is then only a
central content of our consciousness which is crystallized about the
idea of our organism. It has thus become one of the contents of which
consciousness itself is passively aware. Consciousness is an inactive
spectator for the procession of the contents. Thus consciousness itself
cannot change anything in the content nor can it connect the contents.
No other function is left to consciousness but merely that of awareness.
Every change and every fusion and every process must be explained
through the relations of the various contents to one another.
Consciousness has, therefore, not the power to prefer the one idea or to
reject the other, to reënforce the one sensation and to inhibit the
other. From a psychological point of view, we have seen before that
even attention does not mean an activity of consciousness but a change
in the content of consciousness. Certain sensations become more
impressive, more clear, and more vivid, and others fade away, become
indistinct and disappear, but all that goes on in the content of
consciousness and the spectator, consciousness itself, simply becomes
aware of those changes. Consciousness has also in itself no special
span, ideas appear or disappear not because consciousness expands or
narrows itself but because the causal conditions awaken or suppress the
various contents.

Consciousness has in itself no limit; all organization belongs to the
content. Whatever psychical states are attributed to one organism belong
thus to its consciousness but all the connections are entirely
connections of the content. We, therefore, have not even the right to
say that consciousness, as such, has unity. Unity too belongs to the
organization of the content. One part of the content hangs together with
the other parts but consciousness is only the constant condition for
their existence. Where there is no unity, there it cannot have any
meaning to speak of the double or triple existence. There may be a
disconnection in the various parts of the content and a dissociation by
which the normal ties between the various contents may be broken but
consciousness itself cannot fall asunder. Thus consciousness cannot have
any different degrees. The same consciousness experiences the distinct
clear content and the vague fading confused content. Thus also
consciousness can never be aware of itself and the word
self-consciousness is easily misleading. In psychology, it can never
mean that the consciousness which is a subject of all experience is at
the same time object of any experience. Its whole meaning lies in its
being the passive spectator. That of which consciousness becomes aware
in self-consciousness is the idea of the personality, which is certainly
a content. The personality, the actor of our actions, is thus never
anything but an object in psychology, and consciousness never anything
but a subject. Consciousness itself is thus in no way altered when the
idea of the personality is changing. Only if all this is carelessly
confused, if consciousness is sometimes treated as meaning subject of
consciousness, and at another time as meaning the content of
consciousness, and again at another time the unified organization of the
content, and at still another time the connection of the content with
the personality, and if finally all that is confused with the purposive
reality of the immediate personal life--only then, do we find the way
open to those tempting theories of the subconscious personality.

If, instead, we stick to the scientific view, we find the following
facts. First, we have everywhere with us the fact that the earlier
experiences may again enter into consciousness as memory images or as
imaginative ideas, that is, in the order in which they are experienced a
long time before or in a new order, either with a feeling of
acquaintance or without it. Certainly at no time is the millionth part
of what we may be able to reproduce present in our consciousness. Where
are those words of the language, those faces of our friends, those
landscapes, and those thoughts; where have they lingered in the time of
their seclusion? Scientific psychology has no right to propose any other
theory as explanation but that no mental states at all remain and that
all which remained was the disposition of physiological centers. When I
coupled the impression of a man with the sound of his name, a certain
excitement of my visual centers occurred together with the excitement of
my acoustical centers; the connecting paths became paths of least
resistance, and any subsequent excitement of the one cell group now
flows over into the other. It is the duty of physiology to elaborate
such a clumsy scheme and to make us understand in detail how those
processes in the neurons can occur and it is not the duty of psychology
to develop detailed physiological hypotheses. Psychology has to be
satisfied with the fact that all the requirements of the case can be
furnished by principle through physiological explanation. Least of all
ought we to be discouraged by the mere complexity of the process. If a
simple sound and a simple color sensation, or a simple taste and simple
smell sensation, can associate themselves through mere nervous
conditions of the brain, then there is nothing changed by going over to
more and more complex contents of consciousness. We may substitute a
whole landscape for a color patch or the memory of a book for a word,
but we do not reach by that a point where the physiological principle of
explanation, once admitted, begins to lose its value. Complexity is
certainly in good harmony with the bewildering manifoldness of those
thousands of millions of possible connections between the brain cells.

Every experience leaves the brain altered. The nerve fibers and the
cells have gone into new stages of disposition for certain excitements.
This disposition may be slowly lost. In that case the earlier experience
cannot be reproduced; we have forgotten it. But as long as the
disposition lasts--it is quite indifferent whether we conceive it more
in terms of chemical changes or physical variations, as processes in the
nerve cells or between the nerve cells--the physiological change alone
is responsible for the awakening of the memory idea under favoring
associative conditions. Of course, someone might reply: can we not fancy
that there remains on the psychical side also a disposition? Each idea
which we have experienced may have left a psychical trace which alone
may make it possible that the idea may come back to us again. But what
is really meant and what is gained by such a hypothesis?

First, do not let us forget that such a proposition could only have one
possible end in view, namely, the explanation of the reappearance of
memories. But when we discussed the basis of physiological psychology,
we convinced ourselves that mental facts as such are not causally
connected anyhow. Our real inner life has its internal connections,
connections of will and purpose, but as soon as we have taken that great
psychological step and look on inner life as merely psychological
objects, then the material is connected only through the underlying
physiological processes and we can never explain causally the appearance
of an idea through the preceding existence of another idea. We may
expect one after the other, but we have no insight into the mechanism
which makes the second follow after the first. Such insight into
necessary connection we find only on the physical side, and we saw that
just here lies the starting point for the modern view of physiological
psychology. If that holds true for the connections between idea and
idea, of course it holds true in the same way for the connection between
mental disposition and the corresponding memory. We can understand
causally that a chemical disposition in the nerve fibers brings about a
chemical excitement in those neurons, but how a mental disposition is to
create mental experience we could not understand; and to explain it
casually, we should need again a reference to the underlying
physiological processes. The hypothesis of mental dispositions would
thus be an entirely superfluous addition by which we transcend the real
experience without gaining anything for the explanation.

Secondly, if we really needed a mental disposition for each memory
picture, in addition to the physiological disposition of the brain
cells, can we overlook that exactly the same thing would then be
necessary for every perception also? The outer impression produces,
perhaps through eye or ear or skin, an excitement of the brain cell and
this excitement is accompanied by a sensation; and no one fancies that
the appearance of this sensation is dependent upon a special disposition
for it on the mental side. No one fancies it, because it is evident that
such a hypothesis again would be entirely useless. If every new
perception needed such a special mental disposition, we should have to
presuppose dispositions for everything which possibly can come into our
surroundings. Every smell, every word, every face which comes anew to us
would need its special ready-made disposition. In other words, our mind
would contain the disposition for every possible idea and that would
mean that these dispositions would be in no way helps for explanation.
If the disposition exists for everything, no one particular thing can be
explained by the existence of that disposition. Again we should have to
rely entirely upon the physiological brain excitement for explaining
that this word or that word is perceived by our mind. But if the brain
excitement alone is sufficient to explain the new perception in the
mind, then no reason can be found why the renewed brain excitement would
not be sufficient to renew the mental experience. Thus there is nowhere
room for mental dispositions below the level of consciousness.

Thirdly, what could we really mean by such mental dispositions? A
physiological disposition for a physiological action is certainly not
the action itself. The finger movement in piano playing finds only a
disposition in my brain centers, in case I am trained; the movement
itself does not last. But the disposition is at least itself a change
in the physical world. The molecules are somehow differently placed, the
disposition has thus as much objective existence as the resulting
movement. Nothing at all similar can be imagined in the sphere of
psychical contents. Such mental dispositions would have to exist
entirely outside the world of concrete mental experiences and, if we
scrutinize carefully, we soon discover that such theories are only
lingering reminiscences of the purposive view of life, and do not fit at
all into the causal one. If we take the purposive attitude, then every
idea and every will contains indeed all that its meaning involves and
everything which we can logically develop out of it is by intention
contained in it. All mathematical calculations are then contained in the
thought of figures and forms, but they are contained there only by
intention, they are logically inclosed; psychologically the
consciousness of the figures and forms does not contain any disposition
for the development of mathematical systems. We indeed have no right to
throw into a psychological subconsciousness all that which is not
present but involved by intention in the ideas and volitions of our
purposive life.

If thus the memory idea is linked with the past experience entirely by
the lasting physiological change in the brain, we have no reason to
alter the principle, when we meet the memory processes of the hypnotized
person or the hysteric. It is true their memory may bring to light
earlier experiences which are entirely forgotten by the conscious
personality, but that ought to mean, of course, only that nerve paths
have become accessible in which the propagation of the excitement was
blocked up before. That does not bring us nearer to the demand for a
subconscious mental memory. The threshold of excitability changes under
most various conditions. Cells which respond easily in certain states
may need the strongest stimulation in others. The brain cells which are
too easily excited perhaps in maniacal exultation would respond too
slowly in a melancholic depression. Hypnotism, too, by closing the
opposite channels and opening wide the channels for the suggested
discharge, may stir up excitements for which the disposition may have
lingered since the days of childhood and yet which would not have been
excited by the normal play of the neurons. Quite secondary remains the
question of how these reproduced images finally appear in consciousness,
that is, whether they appear with reference to earlier happenings and
are thus felt as remembrances, or whether they enter as independent
imaginations, or whether they finally, under special conditions, take
the character of real, new perceptions. The latter case is well-known in
crystal-gazing, where long-forgotten memory ideas project themselves
into the visual field like hallucinations. But for the theory of the
subconscious, even these uncanny crystal visions do not mean more than
the simplest awakening of the experience of a landscape image of
yesterday.

We turn to a second group of facts and again we have no fault to find
with the observation of the facts, even of the most surprising and
exceptional ones. Our objection refers to the interpretation of them.
This second group contains the active results of such physiological
nervous dispositions. In the first group, the dispositions come in
question only as conditions for a new excitement which was accompanied
by mental experience. In this second group, the dispositions are causes
for other physiological processes which either lead to actions or to
influences on other mental processes. The dispositions are here working
like the setting of switches which turn the nervous process into special
tracks. In the simple cases, of course no one doubts that a purely
physiological basis is involved. The decapitated frog rubs its skin
where it is touched with a drop of muriatic acid in a way which is
ordinarily referred to the trained apparatus of his spinal cord, as no
brain is left, and the usefulness of the action and its adjustment is
very well understood as the result of the connecting paths in the
nervous system.

From such simple adjustment of reactions of the spinal cord, we come
step by step to the more complex activities of the subcortical brain
centers, and finally to those which are evidently only short-cuts of the
higher brain processes. That we react at every change of position with
the right movements to keep our bodily balance, that we walk without
thinking of our steps, that we speak without giving conscious impulse
for the various speech movements, that we write without being aware of
the motor activity which we had to learn slowly, that we play the piano
without thinking of the special impulses of the hands, that we select
the words of a hasty speech, if we have its aim in mind, without
consciously selecting the appropriate words--all that is by continuous
transitions connected with those simplest automatic reactions. And from
here again, we are led over gradually perhaps to the automatic writings
of the hysteric who writes complex messages without having any idea of
their content in consciousness. It is in such cases certainly a symptom
of disease that the activity of these lower brain centers can go over
into the motor impulse of writing without producing secondary effects in
the highest conscious brain centers; it is hysterical. But that the
message of the pencil can be brought about by such operation of lower
brain centers, or at least with imperfect coöperation of the higher
brain centers, is certainly entirely within the limits of the same
physiological explanation.

On the other hand, nothing is changed in the theoretic principles of the
case if the effect of these automatic processes in the nervous system is
not an external muscle action at first, but an influence on other brain
centers which may furnish the consciousness with new contents. We try to
remember a name, that is, a large number of neuron processes are setting
in which normally lead to the excitement of that particular process
which furnishes us the memory image of the name. But those brain cells
may not respond, the channels may be blocked somehow or the excitability
of those cells may be lowered. Now new excitements engage our
psychophysical system. We are thinking of other problems. In the
meantime, by the new equilibrium in the brain the blockade in these
first paths may slowly disappear or the threshold of excitability may be
changed. The physiological excitement may now be carried effectively
into those tracts. The cell response sets in and suddenly the name comes
to our mind. This purely physiological operation in our brain paths must
thus have exactly the same result which it would have had, if more parts
of the process had been accompanied by conscious experience. And again
from mere remembering a forgotten name, we come by slow steps to the
solution of a problem, to the invention, and finally to the creation of
the genius.

Superficiality of thought is easily inclined to object to such a
physiological interpretation and perhaps to denounce it pathetically as
a crude materialism which lowers the dignity of mental work. Nothing
shows more clearly the confusion between a purposive and causal view of
the mind. In the purposive view of our real life, only our will and our
personality have a meaning and can be related to the ideas and higher
aims. Nature is there nothing but the dead material which is the tool of
our will and which has to be mastered by the personality. In that world
alone lie our duty and our morality. But as soon as we have gone over to
the causal aspect of our life and have taken the point of view of the
psychologist, making our inner life a series of contents of
consciousness, of psychical phenomena, we have transformed our inner
experience in such a way that it has become itself nothing but nature.

It is mental nature, nature of psychical stuff, but each part of it is
nothing but a mental element, a mental atom without any meaning and
without any value; nothing but a link in the chain, nothing but a factor
in the explanation of the whole, nothing to which any ethical or
æsthetic or logical or religious significance can any longer be
attached. The psychical sensations and the physical atoms are equally
material for naturalistic explanation. To understand causally a certain
effect, for instance the creation of a work of art, of a discovery or a
thought or a deed as the product of psychical processes, is thus in no
way more dignified or more valuable than to understand it as the product
of physiological brain processes. The one is not more dignified than the
other because both alike have nothing whatever to do with dignity. Both
alike are the necessary results of the foregoing processes, and to
attach a kind of sentimental preference to the explanation through
conscious factors is nothing but a confused reminiscence again of the
entirely different purposive view of life. And surely nothing is gained
for the higher values of life if this confusion sets in, because if the
popular mind becomes unable to discriminate between the secondary,
causal, artificial aspect of science and the primary, purposive aspect
of life, the opposite effect lies still nearer: the values of the real
life suffer and are crowded out by the knowledge of the scientific
facts. Man's moral freedom is then wrongly brought in question, as soon
as it is learned that every action is the product of brain processes.
Life and science alike will gain the more, the more clearly the
purposive and the causal point of view are separated and the more it is
understood that this causal aspect itself is demanded by certain
purposes of life. The oratory of those who denounce the physiological
theories as lacking idealism in reality undermines true moral
philosophy. There is no idealism which can really flourish merely by
ignoring the progress of science and confusing the issues. The true
values of the higher life cannot be safely protected by that thoughtless
idealism which draws its life from vagueness and which therefore has to
be afraid of every new discovery in scientific psychology. Our real
ideals do not lie at all in the sphere in which the problem of causally
explaining the psychological phenomena arises.

Our conscious experiences are thus indeed not only here and there, but
usually the products of chains of processes which go on entirely on the
physiological side. We have no reason at all to seek for those preceding
actions any mental accompaniment outside of consciousness, that means,
any subconscious mental states. Then, of course, this physiological
explanation also covers entirely those after-effects of earlier
experiences, especially emotional experiences, which the physician
nowadays likes to call subconscious "complexes." We shall see what an
important rôle belongs to these facts, especially in the treatment of
hysteria and psychasthenia, but the interpretation again ought to avoid
all playing with the conception of the subconscious. Emotional
experiences may produce there some strong stable dispositions in the
brain system which become mischievous in reënforcing or inhibiting
certain thoughts and actions without awakening directly conscious
experiences. The whole psychological switch system may have been brought
into disorder by such abnormal setting of certain parts, but the
connection of each resulting accident with the primary emotional
disturbances does not contradict the fact that all the causes lie
entirely in disturbances of the central paths. It is a change in the
neurons and their connections. To discover it we may have to go back to
early conscious experiences, but in the process itself there is no
mental factor, and therefore no subconscious emotion is responsible for
the mischief carried out.

Both groups of facts which we have studied so far, have dealt with
processes which were indeed not conscious but which we had no right to
call subconscious inasmuch as they contained no mental process at all
but only physiological dispositions and actions. We turn finally to the
other smaller and more abnormal group of so-called subconscious facts in
which the facts are mental indeed and not only physiological, but not at
all outside of consciousness and thus again not subconscious. A
conscious fact may easily suggest the appeal to subconscious theories to
those who have accepted such theories for other reasons. There are, for
instance, plenty of mental experiences which we do not notice or which
we do not recognize. Yet if we find later that they must have influenced
our mind, we are easily inclined to refer them to subconscious activity.
But it is evident that to be content of consciousness means not at all
necessarily to be object of attention or object of recognition.
Awareness does not involve interest. If I hear a musical sound, I may
not recognize at all the overtones which are contained in it. As soon as
I take resonators and by them reënforce the loudness of those overtones,
they become vivid for me and I can now notice them well even when the
resonators are removed. I surely was aware of them, that is, had them in
consciousness all the time but there were no contrast feelings and no
associations in consciousness which gave them sufficient clearness to
attract attention.

In this way I may be again led by gradual stages to more and more
complex experiences. I may overlook and yet include within my content of
consciousness most various parts of my surroundings; and yet the
neglected is not less in consciousness itself than the attended. Much
that figures in literature as subconscious means indeed nothing else but
the unattended. But it belongs to the elements of psychological analysis
to recognize that the full content of consciousness is always larger
than the narrow field of attention. This narrow field on the other hand
has certainly no sharp demarcation line. There is a steady shading off
from the most vivid to the least vivid. We cannot grasp those least
vivid contents of consciousness, we cannot fixate them as such, because
as soon as we try to hold them, they move from the periphery of the
content into its center and become themselves vivid and clear. But as we
are surely aware of different degrees of clearness and vividness in our
central mass of contents, we have no difficulty in acknowledging the
existence of still lower degrees of vividness in those elements which
are blending and fusing into a general background of conscious
experiences. Nothing stands out there, nothing can be discriminated in
its detail. That background is not even made up of whole ideas and whole
memories and whole emotions and feelings and judgments and volitions,
but of loose fragments; half ideas and quarter ideas, atoms of feelings
and incipient impulses and bits of memory images are always mixed in
that half-dark background. And yet it is by principle not less in
consciousness, and consciousness itself is not different for these
contents. It is not half-clear consciousness, not a lower degree of
awareness, only the objects of awareness are crumbled and fading.

Whether these background objects really exist can only be made out by
studying carefully the changes which result under different conditions,
the influences which those loose parts have on the structure of the
whole, and the effect of their complete disappearance. I may never
really notice a little thing in my room and yet may be aware that it has
been taken away. The visual image of it was an element of my mental
background, when I was sitting at my desk, but it never before moved to
the center of my conscious content. But this center itself is also
constantly changing. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other idea may
enter into it, but in this alternation that which is not in the focus
either remains in consciousness unattended or when it disappears from it
it loses its mental character altogether. If I attend a tiresome lecture
while my mind is engaged with a practical problem of my own life, there
may be a steady rivalry between the words which come with the force of
outer stimulus to my brain and make me listen and my inner difficulties
which claim my attention. I listen for a while, and then suddenly,
without noticing it, my own thoughts may have taken the center of the
stage and again without sudden interruption a word may catch my
attention. While I was thinking of my own problem the sounds of the
lecturer were really outside of my field of attention, yet some remark
now pushes itself again into the center. That does not mean that a
subconscious mind is listening while my lucid mind was thinking, but it
does mean that those words were unattended and remained in the periphery
of the field of consciousness. But when some of the sentences stirred up
in that peripheral field some important associations, they were strong
enough to produce a new motor reaction by which the mental equilibrium
became changed again and by which the lecturer overwhelmed my private
thoughts. Yet even this state of mind, without any break, can go over
into an absolutely physiological process. I may for a while really
inhibit the lecturer's voice completely and remain in the thoughts of my
own imagination. After a minute or two, the resistance against the
acoustical stimulus will certainly be broken and the sound will again
enter into my consciousness, but in that interval there was no
subconscious and not even any unattended mental function; there was no
mental process at all. The sound reached my brain but as the motor
setting was adverse, the sounds did not bring about that highest act of
physiological transmission which is accompanied by mental contents. Thus
it became entirely physiological. Yet of course every word reached my
brain and left traces there. If I were hypnotized after the lecture and
thus the threshold for the real awakening of brain excitements lowered,
it might not be impossible that some of the thoughts of the lecturer
which did not enter my consciousness at all, are now afterwards in the
hypnotic state stirred up in me. Yet even that would not indicate that
they had become mental and thus subconscious at the time of the lecture.

The so-called subconscious, which in reality is fully in consciousness
but only unnoticed, easily shades over into that unconscious which is
also in consciousness but dissociated from the idea of the own
personality and thus somewhat split off from the interconnected mass of
conscious contents. Wherever we meet such phenomena, we are in the field
of the abnormal. The normal mental life is characterized by the
connectedness of the contents. Yet even that holds true, of course, only
if we think of those mental states which exist at one and the same
instant in consciousness. As soon as we consider the succession of
mental events, we cannot doubt that even normal experience shows breaks,
lapses, and complete annihilation of that which a moment before was a
real content in our consciousness. We may have looked at our watch and
certainly had in glancing at the dial a conscious impression, but in the
next moment we no longer know how late it is. The impression did not
connect itself with our continuous personal experience, that is, with
that chief group of our conscious contents which we associate with the
perception of our personality. Under abnormal conditions of the brain,
larger and larger parts of the completely conscious experience may thus
be cut off from the continuity of conscious life. But to be in
consciousness, and therefore to be not-subconscious, does not mean to be
through memory ties connected with the idea of our own personality.

The somnanbulist, for instance, may get up at night time and write a
letter, then go to bed again and not know anything of the event when he
awakes in the morning. We have no reason to claim that he had no
knowledge of the letter in his consciousness when he wrote it. It is
exactly the same consciousness from a psychological standpoint as the
one with which he wakes up. Only that special content has in an abnormal
way entirely disappeared, has not left a possibility of awakening a
memory image, and the action of the personality in writing has thus
become separated and cut off from the connected experiences of the man.
But while the nocturnal episode may be entirely forgotten, it was not
less in consciousness for the time being, than if a normal man should
leave his bed hastily to write a letter. Moreover under abnormal
conditions, as for instance in severe hysteric cases, those dissociated
contents may form large clusters of mental experiences in the midst of
which a new idea of the own personality may develop. Considering that
through such disconnection many channels of discharge are blocked, while
others are abnormally opened, it seems only natural that the idea of the
own acting personality becomes greatly changed. Thus we have in such an
episode a new second personality which may be strikingly different in
its behavior and in its power, in its memories and in its desires, from
the continuous normal one, and this secondary personality may now
develop its own continuity and may arise under special conditions in
attacks which are connected among one another by their own memory bonds.

The two personalities may even alternate from day to day and the normal
one may itself become pathologically altered. In that case the two
alternating personalities would both be different from the original one.
But again we have even in such most complex and exceptional cases only
an alternation in the contents, not an alternation in the consciousness
itself. Different ideas of the own personality with different
associations and impulses follow each other in consciousness and the
abnormality of the situation lies in the lack of memory connections and
of mutual influences, but consciousness remains the same throughout. It
remains the same, just as we do not change consciousness if we feel
ourselves in one hour as members of our family, in the next hour as
professional workers in our office, again later as social personalities
at a party or as citizens at a political meeting or as æsthetic
subjects at the theater. Each time we are to a high degree a different
personality, the idea of our self is each time determined by different
groups of associations, memories, emotions, and impulses. The
differentiation is to be considered as normal only because broad memory
bridges lead over from one to the other. The connection of the various
contents with the various ideas of the own personality constitutes thus
in no way a break of consciousness itself and relegates no one content
into a subconscious sphere.

Finally the same holds true, if the idea of the personality as content
of consciousness in the patient is split into two simultaneous groups,
of which each one is furnished with its own associations. Yet the
interpretation here becomes extremely difficult and arbitrary. Take the
case that a patient in severe hysteria at our request writes down the
history of her life. We should not hesitate to say that she is doing it
consciously but now we begin to talk with her and slowly the
conversation takes her attention while her pencil is continuing to write
down the connected story of her youth. Again the conversation by itself
gives the impression of completely conscious behavior. As both functions
go on at the same time, the person who converses does not know what the
person who writes is writing, and the writer is uninfluenced by the
conversation. Various interpretations are possible. Indeed we might
think that by such double setting in the pathological brain two
independent groups in the content of consciousness are formed, each one
fully in consciousness and yet both without any mutual influence and
thus without mutual knowledge. In the light of such interpretation, it
has been correctly proposed to speak of coconscious processes, rather
than subconscious. Or we may interpret it more in harmony with the
ordinary automatic writing or with other merely physiological reactions.
Then we should suppose that as soon as the conversation sets in, the
brain centers which control the writing movement work through channels
in which no mental factors are involved. One of the two characteristic
reaction systems would then be merely physiological. We saw before that
the complexity of the process is no argument against the strictly
physiological character of the event. That various activities can
coexist in such a way that one of them may at any time slide down from
the conscious centers to the merely physical ones, we all know by daily
experience. We may go home through the streets of the busy town engaged
with our thoughts. For a while the idea of our way and of the sidewalk
is in our consciousness, when suddenly we reach our house and notice
that for a long while we have no longer had any thought at all of the
way. We were absorbed by our problems, and the motor activity of walking
towards our goal was going on entirely in the physiological sphere. But
whether we prefer the physiological account or insist on the coconscious
phenomena, in either case is there any chance for the subconscious to
slip in? That a content of consciousness is to a high degree dissociated
or that the idea of the personality is split off is certainly a symptom
of pathological disturbance, but it has nothing to do with the
constituting of two different kinds of consciousness or with breaking
the continuous sameness of consciousness itself. The most exceptional
and most uncanny occurrences of the hospital teach after all the same
which our daily experience ought to teach us: there is no
subconsciousness.

PART II

THE PRACTICAL WORK OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

VII

THE FIELD OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

We have discussed the psychological tools with which the psychotherapist
has to work but we have not spoken as yet of psychotherapy itself. All
that we have studied has been by way of preparation; and yet the right
preparation is almost the most important factor for the right kind of
work. To rush into psychotherapy with hastily gathered conceptions of
mental life may be sometimes successful for the moment, but must always
be ultimately dangerous. It is often most surprising what a haphazard
kind of psychology is accepted as a basis for psychotherapy even by
scientifically schooled physicians who would never believe that common
sense would be sufficient to settle the problems of anatomy and
physiology; as soon as the mind is in question, no serious study seems
needed. Can we be surprised then that in the amateur medicine of the
country within and without the church any fanciful idea of mental life
may flourish? If we are to recognize the rights and wrongs of
psychotherapy in a scientific spirit, a sober analysis of the mental
facts involved was indeed at the very first most essential. Now we can
easily draw the conclusions from our findings.

We recognized from the start the fundamental difference between two
different attitudes which we can take towards the inner life of any
personality, the purposive view and the causal. We recognized the sphere
to which each belongs and we saw that all medical treatment demands the
causal view, thus dealing with inner life as part of the causal chain of
events. Each inner experience became therefore a series of so-called
contents of consciousness. These contents can be described and must be
analyzed into their elements. The basis of psychotherapy is therefore an
analytic psychology which conceives the inner experience as a
combination of psychical elements.

But the final aim was the causal connection. The appearance and
disappearance of those millions of elements and their connection had to
be explained. We recognized that such an explanation of the contents of
consciousness was possible only through the connections between the
accompanying brain processes. Every psychical change had to be conceived
as parallel to a physiological change. The psychology which is to be the
basis of psychotherapy had to be therefore a physiological psychology.

We recognized that these psychophysiological processes were processes of
transmission between impressions and expressions, that is, between
incoming nervous currents and outgoing nervous currents, between stimuli
and reactions. Thus we have no central process which is not influenced
by the surroundings and which is not at the same time the starting point
of an action. We have normal health of the personality as long as there
is a complete equilibrium in the functions of the organism which adjusts
the activities to the surroundings. Every abnormality is a disturbance
of this equilibrium. A psychology which is the basis of psychotherapy
thus conceives every mental process in relation to both the ideas and
the actions; it avoids all one-sidedness by which the mind is cut off
either from its resources or from its effects. The relations to the
impressions are usually the less neglected: and we must the more
emphasize the fact that the psychology needed for psychotherapy knows no
mental fact which does not start an action and that every change in the
system of actions involves a change in the central experience. Wherever
this equilibrium of adjusted functions is disturbed, some therapy of the
physician has to set in: whether psychotherapy is in order depends upon
the special conditions.

We have recognized that there are no mental facts outside of those which
are in consciousness and that from a psychological point of view
consciousness itself does not have different degrees and different
levels, that all varieties of experience refer thus only to the special
content and its organization. There is thus no subconscious. On the
other hand, we saw that there is no conscious experience which is not
based on a bodily brain process. By these two fundamental facts of
scientific psychology, every possible psychotherapy gets from the start
its clear middle way between two extreme views which are popular today.
The one school nowadays lives from the contrast between consciousness
and subconsciousness and makes all psychotherapy work with and through
and in the subconscious. The other school creates a complete antithesis
between mind and body and makes psychotherapy a kind of triumph of the
mind over the body. Practically every popular treatise on
psychotherapeutic subjects in recent years belongs to the one or the
other group; and yet both are fundamentally wrong. And while, of course,
this mistake is one of theoretical interpretation, it evidently has its
practical consequences. The fantastic position allowed to a subconscious
mind easily gives to the doctrine a religious or even a mystical turn
and the artificial separation between the energies of the mind and those
of the body leads easily to a moral sermon. Whether this amalgamation of
medicine with religion or with morality may not be finally dangerous to
true morality and true religion is a question which will interest us
much later. Here we only have to ask whether it is not harmful to the
interests of the patient and thus to the rights of medicine, and indeed
that must be evident here at the very threshold. Both schools must have
the tendency to extend psychotherapy at the expense of bodily therapy
and to narrow down psychotherapy itself to a therapy by appeals which
in the one case are suggestions to the subconscious and in the other
case persuasions and encouragements to the conscious will. As soon as we
have overcome the prejudices of those two rival schools and have
recognized that both are wrong, that there is no subconscious and that
there is no psychological fact which is not at the same time a
physiological one, we see at once that this common procedure of both
schools is unjustified and dangerous. Mental therapy and physical
therapy ought to be most intimately connected parts of the same
therapeutic effort and mental therapy includes by far more than mere
suggestions and appeals. All that involves of course that its systematic
application belongs in the hands of the well-trained physician and of
nobody else, but on the other hand, it involves that every physician
ought to be well schooled in psychology.

As soon as a disturbance to be cured is considered as a lack of
equilibrium in psychophysical functions, every mental influence, every
suggestion and appeal becomes itself an excitement or an inhibition of
nerve cells. The sharp demarcation line between a psychical agency and a