Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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The use of hypnotism in education has also been frequently discussed. Cases of masturbation have been treated by hypnotic suggestion. Berillon employed suggestion to cure the habit of biting the nails (onychography), which is said to be particularly prevalent among degenerates, and, according to J. Voisin, is often associated with masturbation. Here also would belong cases in which exaggerated bashfulness and timidity, particularly the dread of being looked at, about which Hartenberg, Bechterew, and Soukhanoff have written, were treated by hypnotic suggestion. Most of the cases set down as coming within the province of the educational use of hypnotic suggestion might with equal justice be reckoned medical cases. The distinctions here made are rather arbitrary. When a child is attacked with involuntary movements through imitating choreatic movements, it is difficult to say where the evil habit ends and the disease begins. It is indifferent whether we say that hypnotism is used in such cases to cure disease or in the interests of education; the point is to know what is meant. There is nothing opposed to this in the view held by Fore], Dekhtereff, and probably all other serious investigators, that the use of hypnosis for educational purposes should be reserved for medical men experienced in this domain, and that laymen should not be allowed to hypnotize for this purpose, as was proposed by Decroix. When an anonymous German author thought he made the question ridiculous, or refuted the adherents of the educational use of hypnotic suggestion by banishing hypnotism from the schools, he was simply combating a proposal that had never been made. Berillon,


474 HYPNOTISM.

Herment, Netter, Leclerc, Ladame, Brunnberg, A. - Vois?n, Collineau, Sinani, Natanson, Pamart, and Pigeaud, who de-voted his thesis, La Suggestion en Pedagogic, Paris, 1897, to the question, merely mean by the educational use of hypnosis that certain faults in children, which many people consider actually pathological, should be cured by medical hypnotic suggestion. According to Berillon, the chief value of this is that it enables us to combat automatisms by the influence of suggestion on the inhibitory centre. Whether hypnotic suggestion produces great results in such.cases is another question. Binet was probably right in severely criticizing the enthusiastic report in which Luckens recounted his impressions of a visit to Berillon. Nevertheless, we shall be able to obtain good results

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