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social importance of suggestion by Becterew. Grohmann has dealt with suggestion
by letter, and demon, strated the dangers of character-reading by advertizing
graphologists. In 1900; Binet published a book, La Sug estibilitd, in which
the susceptibility of children to non-hypnotic suggestion is discussed; the
author also furnishes historical data on the gradual differentiation of suggestion
from hypnotism, and at the same time demonstrates that the classification of
personal characteristics, as given by Tissie, Bolton, and Lapouge, is based
entirely upon suggestibility. Numerous other investigators have dealt with suggestion
and suggestibility from the psychological point of view; among them I may mention
Hellpach, who dwells upon the connection subsisting between suggestibility and
hysteria. But it is to Lipps that credit is particularly due for having, in
a lucid and stimulating dis-
28 HYPNOTISM.
course, attempted to give a psychological basis to, and a delimitation of, the
problem of suggestion. I must here again mention the American investigator,
Boris Sidis, whose work, The Psychology of Suggestion, is directed to the elucidation,
not only of hypnotic, but more especially of non-hypnotic suggestion.
In order to facilitate a general discussion of the most important questions
in the domain of hypnotism, a congress met in Paris in August 1889, at which
nearly all civilized nations, including Germany, were represented, and at which
many important matters were cleared up. In general, it may be said that the
views of the Nancy school carried the day. A second congress met in Paris in
1900. Raymond, Charcot's successor, attempted in his introductory address to
represent the congress as a reconciliatory meeting of Charcot's school with
that of Nancy, and many speakers—Berillon, Crocq, Magnin—emphasized,
on the lines of Charcot's teaching, the similarity subsisting between certain
phases of hysteria and many of the phenomena of hypnosis. Still, on the whole,
the views of the Nancy school prevailed at this congress. More recently many
congresses and scientific assemblies have occupied themselves with hypnotism.
Only a few need be mentioned. At the Olten meeting of the Swiss Medical Association
in 1888, Forel delivered an address on the therapeutics of suggestion. At the
International Congiess for Psychiatrics, held at Paris in 1889, Ladame spoke
of the therapeutic value of suggestion, but was opposed by Benedikt. At the
Congress of Russian Physicians in St. Petersburg in 1889, Tokarski and Danillo
introduced an interesting discussion in the neurological section. In 189o, B6rillon
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