Hypnotism / by Albert Moll.

  • Moll, Albert.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hypnotism / by Albert Moll. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    processes ; the identity could only be proved by a likeness of symptoms, not by a likeness in the manner of their production. When one person receives a blow on the ear and haemorrhage under the skin follows, while another receives a like blow, and has the drum of the ear burst: these are two different injuries, and the fact that they have the same cause does not make them identical. Who is hypnotizable ? In order to settle this question without hypnotic experiments, Ochorowicz has invented a special instrument—the hypnoscope : it is an iron magnet in the form of a ring, which the person to be tested puts on his finger. Hypnotizable persons are supposed to experience certain sensations in the skin and twitchings of the muscles, while with the insusceptible nothing of the kind takes place. The researches of other investigators have not confirmed this (Obersteiner, Gessmann, Grasset, Bottey). Other signs which are supposed to indicate susceptibility to hypnotism I consider untrustworthy. Neither neurasthenia nor pallor, neither hysteria nor general feebleness of health, produce a disposition to hypnosis. As far as hysteria is concerned, it is not in my experience peculiarly suited to hypnotism. Our ordinary hysteria with its variable characteristics of headache and the feeling of a lump in the throat (globus) combined with the general hysterical desire to be interesting and to exaggerate the sufferings en- dured, produces, according to my experience, very little disposition to hypnosis. The spirit of contra- diction, very strongly developed in such patients, contributes not a little to this. The mistaken notion that hysterical or nervous patients are particularly susceptible to hypnotism results from the fact that most physicians have experimented with them only ;