Course IV - Lecture IV
The History of Hypnotism and Somnambulism
GA 52
Berlin
June 6th, 1904
Today I have to speak to you about a chapter of the newer cultural
history which, indeed, repeats an ancient history in a certain form, but in
such a peculiar, typical way that perhaps nothing is more suited than this chapter
to show how difficult it is to bring certain great phenomena in the life of
the spirit, in the life of the human being generally, closer to the official
scholarship. Just today some — maybe a little bit harsh — words
are necessary with regard to this chapter. Do not accept any word which I say
in this direction in such a way, as if passion or emotion dictates it. I can
assure you that I have the greatest respect to many a scholar with regard to
his researches and his scientific ability, and that to him, nevertheless, some
— I would almost like to say — painful word must be said speaking
about the chapter of hypnotism in a short historical outline. At the same time
we want to give short information of something related, of somnambulism.
A lot of people believe today that
hypnotism is something quite new that it is something that science has conquered
at most since somewhat more than half a century. You allow me to give you evidence
from the 17th century. The evidence which I would like to give you is from a
book which one reads today a little, from the book of the Jesuit Father Athanasius
Kircher, and comes from the year 1646. I would like to inform
of the words of this Jesuit father in fairly modern language. They are in a
book with which Goethe dealt in detail in his history of the theory of colours
because this father plays a quite important role also in the history of the
theory of colours. In this book it is also spoken of that which the Jesuit father
calls actinobolism. This would mean approximately: the radiating imagination.
“This very big force of imagination appears even with the animals. The
chickens have such a strong imagination that they get motionless and a peculiar
daze if they only see a string. The following experience shows the truth of
this assertion: Miraculous experiment about the imagination
of the chicken. Lay a chicken, whose feet are tied together, on any floor, feeling
caught it will try in the beginning to throw off the chain in any way, flapping
its wings and moving its whole body. But, in the end, it will calm down after
vain endeavours, despairing to escape, as it were, and submit to the arbitrariness
of the winner. While now the chicken lies there quietly, draw a straight line
of the same form as the string from its eye on the soil with chalk or any other
paint, then let it alone after you have undone the chains: I say, the chicken,
although it is relieved of the chain, does not fly away at all, even if one
provokes it. The explanation of this behaviour is based on nothing else than
on the lively imagination of the animal which takes that line drawn on the soil
for its chain with which it is tied up. I made this experiment often to the
surprise of the spectators and I do not doubt that it also succeeds with other
animals. Nevertheless, the reader eager to learn may inform himself about it.”
Another German writer, Caspar Schott,
gave a similar communication of the condition of animals approximately at the
same time in a book entitled Entertainment of the Human Imagination.
In it the concerning author who was a friend of Athanasius Kircher says to us
that he took the instructions of this book from numerous attempts of a French
medical writer. What is reported in this book is nothing else than what
we call hypnotism of animals. I have already spoken in a former talk about the
relations of hypnotism and somnambulism; hence, I recapitulate this chapter
only briefly today.
You know that one understands hypnotism
as a state similar to sleep in which the human being is brought artificially
by different means to which we still want to point in the course of the lecture.
In this sleep-like state the human being shows different qualities he does not
show in the waking consciousness and also not in the usual sleep. You can sting
a person in the hypnotic trance with needles, for instance; he proves insensitive.
You can lay down a person if he is in a certain state of sleep and stretch his
limbs; then they become so stiff and solid that you can lay the person on two
chairs, and the heaviest man can still stand on this rigid body.
Those who saw the experiments of
the really extraordinary hypnotist Hansen in the eighties
of the 19th century know that Hansen laid the people, after he had transported
them into hypnotic sleep, with a very small under-surface on two chairs and
stood then on them, this heavy Hansen! These hypnotised bodies behaved almost
like a board.
It is also known that somebody who
has transported a person into such a sleep-like state can give him so-called
suggestive commands. If you have transported a person into such a state, you
can say to him: you get up now, go to the middle of the room and stop there
like spellbound; you do not go on; you are not able to stir! — He carries
out everything and then he stops like spellbound. Yes, you are able to do even
more. You can say to the person concerned in a room full of people: here in
this room is not one person excepting me and you. — He will say to you:
here is nobody, the room is quite empty. — Or you may also say to him:
here is no light — and he sees nobody. These are negative hallucinations.
However, you can also give him hallucinations of other type. You can say to
him, while you give him a potato: this is a pear, take and eat it! — And
you can see that he thinks to eat a pear. You may give him water to drink, and
he thinks that it is champagne.
I could still give a lot of other
examples, but I still want to give some especially strange matters only. If
you cause a visual hallucination in such a hypnotised person and say to him,
for example: you see a red circle there on the white wall, he sees a red circle
on a white wall. If you show him then, after he had this hallucination, the
red circle through a prism, this hallucination appears refracted exactly according
to the refraction laws of the prism, just like another phenomenon. The visual
hallucinations produced with hypnotised people follow the external refraction
laws; they still follow other optical laws, but it would go too far if we wanted
to give them in detail. Especially significant is to know: if we give a command
to such a hypnotised person which he should carry out not straight away, but
only after some time, this can also happen. I transport a person into hypnosis,
say to him: tomorrow you come to me and say hello to me and then ask me for
a glass of water. — If the experiment is carried out so that all preconditions
are fulfilled, he knows nothing about the experiment after waking up; but tomorrow
he feels in the time which I said to him an irresistible urge and carries out
what I posed for him. This is a posthypnotic suggestion. This may apply to strange
cases, in particular also to date suggestions. I can suggest to a hypnotised
person to carry out a particular action in three times ten days; however, a
lot of actions must be carried out before. Do not get a fright from it. Perhaps
only an occultist is able to have an overview of the preconditions which are
necessary; nevertheless, the person concerned will carry out the command which
was given to him in three times ten days on time.
These are phenomena which are not
denied by the fewest, also not by scholars who have occupied themselves with
these questions. Somebody who studied the matters may hardly deny the information
which I have given. However, what goes beyond that is denied by many people.
But we have also seen that in the last decades such a sum of matters has been
added from the part of the physiologists and psychologists, so that one cannot
know how much is still added to the admitted matters.
I have shown you that such abnormal
states of consciousness are also found indicated in the books of the 17th century
about which I have spoken. I could also explain with regard to other phenomena
that knowledge of the hypnotic state has existed with the occultists of all
times. However, the proof cannot be produced that the ancient Egyptian, in particular,
the ancient Indian priest sages knew only what I have reported to you as the
phenomena of hypnotism — and they are the most elementary ones: these
sages knew even more. Because they knew even more, they were prevented to inform
the big masses of their wisdom. We still see why. However, one thing is strange.
The Jesuit Kircher is said to have received his wisdom indirectly from India.
Keep in mind this story of the 17th century that this wisdom was transmitted
from India.
The following centuries, since the
17th century, were not especially convenient for such matters in the external
science. This external science made good progress in particular in the fields
of physics, astronomy, and the investigation of the external sense-perceptible
facts. I have already explained last time which significance this progress had
for the human thinking. I have shown that above all this progress made people
used to only look for the real knowable, the truth in the sense-perceptible
matters, so that the human being got used to not accepting what cannot be seized
with the hands, seen with the eyes, conceived with the inferring reason. It
is the age of Enlightenment to which we approach, that age in which the human
average mind set the tone in which one wanted to recognise everything in the
way as one recognises the physical phenomena. With physical phenomena the experiments
must succeed if only the preconditions are properly produced. Everybody can
fulfil these preconditions. However, in the field of hypnotism something else
is necessary. The immediate influence of life on life is necessary there, yes,
the immediate influence of a human being on a human being or of a human being
on a living being is necessary. The procedure which the human being has to carry
out with the chicken, like in the experiment which already the Jesuit Father
Kircher explained to us in the 17th century, this procedure had to be carried
out by a human being. Also all the other matters of which I have spoken must
be carried out by a human being to another living human being or being. It may
be — and this is the most important question — because the human
beings are very different from each other that the human beings would have such
different qualities that they have an effect of quite different type on other
living beings, above all on other human beings. Thus it could probably also
happen because the human being is necessary to produce hypnotic phenomena that
a person does not have the qualities which are necessary to hypnotise a human
being, whereas another person has them. We not needed to wonder if this were
that way. We know that an interaction takes place with the concerning matters,
comparable to that of a magnet and iron filings. The iron filings remain at
rest if you put wood into them; however, if you put a magnet, these filings
position themselves in particular way.
We have to assume that human beings
are so different from each other that the one can cause particular effects like
the magnet, and the other can cause no effect like the wood. The purely rational
clarification does never admit such a view. It supposes that one human being
is like the other. The average scale is put onto the human being, and one does
never admit that anybody can be a significant scholar, but has no ability, does
not have the qualities to produce the hypnotic state. Nevertheless, there may
be the case that it depends less on the human being who is hypnotised, but more
on that who hypnotises who is active. The qualities may be even caused artificially
in a human being who wields such a power on the other that such phenomena happen
of which we have spoken, yes that much more important phenomena may happen.
The rational clarification that makes no difference between human being and
human being does not admit this. Those, however, who have concerned themselves
with these matters, were aware of that up to the age of Enlightenment. Somebody
who follows the course of history finds another view of science than we have
it today. Sometimes these are only oral traditions which were passed on from
school to school. There is never spoken about the state of the hypnotised person,
about the state of that who should be hypnotised; it does not depend on him
at all. However, methods are given to us which enable another person, the hypnotist,
to cause such forces in him that he can exert such an influence on his fellow
men. In the occult schools particular methods are given with which the person
receives such a power over his fellow men. However, one also demands in all
schools that that who develops such a power in himself has to go through a certain
development occupying the whole human being. There does not help the merely
intellectual learning, there does not help only thinking and science. Only those
who know and practice the mysterious methods who work the way up to a lofty
level of moral development who go through the most different probations in intellectual,
spiritual and moral respect rise above their fellow men and become priests of
humankind. Their development makes it impossible to use such a power in another
way than for the benefit of their fellow men. Because such knowledge gives the
highest force because it happens by means of a transformation of the whole human
being, it was kept secret. Only when other views gained acceptance, there one
also obtained other views about these phenomena, other intentions. Occult traditions
form the basis of the question for centuries, and it does not depend on something
else than on that: which requirements has anybody to meet whom is given such
a power, which methods are necessary, so that a human being can attain such
an influence on his fellow men?
Thus this question was till the
age of Enlightenment. Only in the daybreak of Enlightenment from such a side
like that of the Jesuit father of whom I have spoken something of these phenomena
could be divulged in popular scientific way. In former times anybody who knew
the case and the way would never have had the audacity to speak about these
phenomena in public books. Only by indiscretion something of this matter could
come to the general public. Only when one did no longer know what a tremendous
importance the saying has: knowledge is a power, only at this point in time,
when one played — like the child plays with the fire — with a knowledge
rather fateful under circumstances and did not know what to do with it. Only
in such a time it was possible to discuss this knowledge, which means nothing
else than dominion of the mind over the mind, in popular way. Hence, it is not
surprising that the real official scholarship, which is a child of the last
centuries, did not know what to do with these phenomena.
In particular, it did not know what
to do when it was confronted by Mesmer with these phenomena
in a strangely surprising way at the end of the 18th century. Mesmer was a much
defamed man, on the other side he was praised to the skies. This person made
the question flow freely for the scholarship. The term Mesmerism comes from
him. It was a quite peculiar person, a person as they may have appeared in the
18th century in bigger number than this could be the case today; a person who,
as we will see, had to be inevitably misjudged by many people, however, who
was able to make this question flow freely because of his fearlessness —
which admittedly appears to the outsider as adventurousness, as charlatanism.
In 1766, a treatise appeared by
Mesmer about the Influence of the Planets on Human Life which the modern
scholar must regard as a quite fantastic thing. Darwin’s biographer, Preyer,
esteemed by me — take this word seriously, because it concerns not a prejudice,
but characterises him — showed an enormous impartiality just of this question
what I have to appreciate, and, hence I choose him as a particular example of
how little the changed science of the 19th century can do justice to that which
was written from quite different preconditions in the 18th century. Preyer dealt
with Mesmer’s works with all good will and could find nothing else than
empty words in them. Who does not assess such matters fantastically but with
expertise, understands it, and he will even meet somebody with mistrust who
believes to be able to protect Mesmer against Preyer. If one wants to judge
correctly, the preconditions of such a judgment are more profound than one normally
believes. However, this first treatise should not occupy us, because it shows
to the insightful person nothing else than that Mesmer understood to master
the science of his time from a lofty point of view and with a comprehensive
look. I want to emphasise this, so that the faith does not appear that he dealt
as a dilettante with such matters. No doubt, Mesmer was a perfect young scholar
when he wrote his doctor thesis, and you can find what he wrote in countless
theses of people who became quite well-behaved and competent scholars of the
18th and still the 19th centuries.
Mesmer appeared with the so-called
magnetic cures in Vienna in the last third of the 18th century. He made use
of certain methods to these magnetic cures at first which were common practice
at that time, actually. It was in those days the tradition which never completely
has died down that one can achieve healings by means as I will mention them.
This tradition has come to life in that time. He made use of a method which
had nothing captious: steel magnets were put on the ill part of the body or
were brought near to it, supposedly or really they caused relief or healing
of pains. Mesmer made use of such magnets in his institute for a longer time.
Then, however, he noticed something particular. Perhaps he has not noticed that
at this time, perhaps he has also already known it and wanted to use a more
usual method only as a hiding means. He threw the magnets aside and said that
the force went out from his own body that it is merely transferred as a healing
force from his own body to the ill body in question, so that the healing is
an interaction between a force which he develops in his body and another force
which is in the ill body of the other. He calls this force animal magnetism.
I tell this roughly; if I explained it in detail, it would take too much time.
He had differences in Vienna very soon — about the results of his cure
we do not want to talk. He had to leave the city and turned to Paris. At first
he had quite extraordinary results there. He was unusually popular. However,
the scholars could not get over that Mesmer earned 6,000 Francs monthly what
is something awkward from a doctor's viewpoint if anybody earns so much. This
should go without saying on the part of science striving for progress and tending
to materialism.
You know that we are in the 18th
century in the age of Enlightenment that in France the emotions were running
high and that one wanted to accept nothing that one cannot see with eyes, cannot
touch with hands, and cannot deduce with reason. You understand that the official
science, which was influenced more or less by the materialistic school of thought,
took offence at matters which one could not understand. Hence, Mesmer’s
healings became a public scandal. People said to themselves: these must be no
real, but only imaginary illnesses, so that hysterical people are cured only
in their imagination, or that sick people were relieved of pains in their imagination.
In any case, one denied Mesmer’s method. The result of the fact was that
by order of the king two corporations were asked to give an expert opinion about
Mesmerism. I would like to state that to you, so that you see how in those days
science really faced these things; so that you see that one must not look at
these matters with passion, but also see at the same time how in those days
one had to misjudge the stance necessarily which one had to take toward Mesmer.
A woman was blindfolded, and one
said to her that one has got Monsieur d'Elon who would magnetise her. Three
of the representatives of the commission were attending: one to ask, one to
write, one to mesmerise. The woman was not mesmerised. After three minutes the
woman felt the influence, became stiff, stood up from the chair and stamped
with the feet. Now the crisis was there. One spoke of this crisis also with
Mesmer’s healings, one ascribed the success to it.
One brought a hysterical woman before
the door and said to her that the mesmerist were in the room. She started shivering,
and the crisis came.
The commission had stated that there
is something strange, something that the commission could not expect. It had
stated something after which it could make no other judgement, as that the whole
procedure of Mesmer were a swindle. Everybody who understood a little bit of
it had been able to forecast that they would come with a probability of 95 to
hundred to this result, and that they could come with their preconditions to
no other explanations. But, nevertheless, the commission was able to come to
other results! Is this nothing at all that a woman only grasps the thought of
a person, gets to all the states which are told to us here about the woman inside
in the room like about the woman outside? Above all we have to ask, and this
commission should have asked itself in those days also honestly and sincerely:
could they expect such an effect of the thought according to their rationalistic
point of view? Would have they had any possibility with their materialistic
means to explain the effect of the thought on the bodily states? Even if we
concede the right to the commission to condemn Mesmer, one never can concede
the right to it that it left this case. The case had to be investigated further,
just by the commission, because there is a particular scientific question without
doubt.
I would still like to emphasise
a fact which is significant for that who knows answer which has been assessed,
however, only disparagingly. A big sum was offered to Mesmer, so that he hands
over his secret to other people. It was also said that the sum was paid to him,
but he would have kept the secret for himself and would not have informed others.
This is understood by many as a swindle. But short time after so-called hermetic
societies appeared all over France in which the same arts were used to a certain
degree. One did not say that he had betrayed the secret, but there were found
those who exercised his methods. Who knows something about these matters understands
that he only informed trustworthy persons of his secrets. It says nothing at
all that he did not publish his secrets in the newspapers. Associate this statement
with the fact that those who really know something of such matters do not inform
of them, because it does not depend on informing but on developing certain qualities
which produce these phenomena.
You understand now where the societies
came from. It does not depend at all on the experiments; the experiments are
still to be forbidden if they are carried out by unauthorised people. It depends
merely on developing the hypnotist. Actually, the scientists could hardly give
themselves any explanation of these phenomena at that time. Hence, these phenomena
were thrown to the dead at first, as by the French Academy and also by the whole
science. However, they appeared over and over again. In Germany such phenomena
were discussed perpetually. Newspapers were founded specially for it. People
who believe that such an influence can be exerted from person to person explain
the fact assuming a fluid, a fine substance that goes from the hypnotist to
the hypnotised person and exerts the influence. But even those who do not deny
the influence cannot exceed materialism. They say to themselves: substance remains
substance, no matter whether it is coarse or fine. — One could imagine
the spiritual-effective as nothing else than something material. It is a result
of the fact that one tried to interpret them in the materialistic age that these
phenomena were interpreted that way
I cannot describe the different
decades which followed Mesmer in detail. I only want to mention that the phenomena
have never been forgotten completely, that even again and again people appeared
who took these phenomena very seriously. There were also university professors
who have described these phenomena in detail and already knew different matters,
which we today subsume under the concept of hypnotic phenomena. They knew of
the so-called verbal suggestion. They stated, for example, a lot more than what
modern science wants to admit. One asserted of a scholar that he could read
a book very well with shut eyes; that he could read with the heart and could
read the words in such a state merely touching a book page. One asserted that
one could also get to artificial somnambulism to see distant events, that is
to become a clairvoyant.
All these phenomena were revived
— and it is the strange fact that the scholars of the 19th century were
forced to encounter it — by wandering hypnotists like Hansen who wandered
in America during the forties who showed phenomena before the big audience and
were paid for it. They often caused tremendous effects in their spectators.
One called them soul tamers. In particular Justinus Kerner calls these people
soul tamers because they produced soul effects by means of mere staring and
looking. However, calling attention to the phenomena has dangerous aspects because
on one side dangers exist for the experimental subjects, on the other side,
certain swindlers fooled the audience in the most unbelievable way.
I would like to speak of an experiment
which was often made and of which I am convinced personally that it perplexed
and cheated souls in big public gatherings again and again. The experiment consists
in the following: here sits a blindfolded medium. It can see nothing. The concerning
impresario walks around in the audience and says at the end of the hall: say
something in my ear or put a question, and we want to see whether the medium
can know something of it. Or write down a word or a sentence to me on a piece
of paper. The one or the other happens, and after a short time the medium at
the table, very far from the impresario, says the word which is whispered or
is written down. Nobody excepting the two human beings knows anything about
it, and the concerning impresario can show the piece of paper or allow the person
concerned to ask whether the information of the medium is right. In truth nothing
else than the following happened in many cases where I was present: the man
who walked around was a very skilful ventriloquist. The medium moved the lips
at the moment at which it should pronounce the word. The whole audience looked
at the lips of the medium, and the impresario himself said the word or sentence
in question. I have experienced again and again that in each case hardly two
human beings were in the hall who could explain this experiment. Of course,
such cases were mixed up repeatedly with flawless facts. One must be in the
know there to be not fooled by wandering mesmerists. Hence, it is unfortunate
that this case has to be pointed out to the scholars. There are ventriloquists
who can produce whole melodies, piano playing et cetera by ventriloquism. Who
knows these matters is not easily fooled concerning these questions.
In the forties and fifties the attention
of the scholars was called to it once again by wandering soul tamers. In particular,
it was a certain Stone who caused great sensation and became a talking point.
Already some time before, however, such a showman had induced
a scholar to scrutinise these phenomena once again. This scholar gave us
scholarly treatises about these phenomena from the forties. They referred chiefly
to the method of fixation, to staring at a brilliant object. This scholar has
drawn attention straight away to the fact that with all these phenomena no specific
influence goes out from the hypnotist to the persons to be hypnotised. Just
this experiment of fixation was so significant to him because he wanted to show
that these phenomena concern an abnormal state of the experimental subject.
He wanted to show that no interaction takes place, but that everything that
happened is nothing else than a physiological phenomenon caused by a cerebral
process. He wanted to show that Mesmerism is absurd with which the concerning
person must have the particular qualities. Thus the tone was given basically
in which from now on these questions were treated by the official science for
the second half of the 19th century. Only with few exceptions this question
was understood in such a way as if it could be treated like an everyday scientific
experiment, as if it concerned nothing else than a fact which has significance
only if it can be brought about again like another scientific experiment which
can be performed and repeated any time. This requirement was also put to this
experiment. Under this condition science also deigned to study the phenomena.
However, the study was carried out in a rather unfavourable age. To characterise
to you how unfavourable the age of the fifties, sixties was, I want to state
something else that is the most significant for the observer of the development
of the 19th century that is ignored, however, by the official science as a rule.
Long time before Stone, before the
academic scholarship, a man appeared in Paris who was a Catholic priest before,
who had gone then to the Brahmans to India, and who used the methods which he
had got to know in India, hypnotism and suggestion, also the inspiration of
person to person, to his healings. This man, called Faria,
explained all the phenomena in another way. He said that it would depend only
on one matter; it would depend on the fact that the hypnotist can cause a particular
mental condition in the person to be hypnotised that he was able to transport
the masses of ideas of the person to be hypnotised into a state of concentration.
If this concentration is achieved if the whole mass of ideas of the person concerned
is concentrated upon a particular point, the concerning state must happen. Then
the other phenomena must also happen, and also the more intricate ones, which
Faria shows.
There you have an explanation and
interpretation from somebody who understood the case really. But he was not
understood. He is simply overlooked. This is also explicable. — I have
said that the Jesuit Father who discussed this case first and who got his wisdom
from India indicated the explanation in the heading. However, the scholars did
not understand a lot of it, so that the learnt Preyer said still in 1877 if
the church attributes these phenomena to imagination, this shows only how much
imagination the church has. He got personal about the Catholic priest to have
become a Brahman. However, one always finds that hypnotism was used to healings
and to soothe the pain with operations. Those who had relationship to Faria
managed that a person to be operated did not perceive pains by means of mental
influence. In 1847, chloroform was discovered; a means of which the materialistic
researchers could believe and also said rightly that it prevents pain with operations.
Thus the understanding of the other analgesic had got lost for long time. Only
single, really thinking researchers also dealt with these phenomena in the next
time. Who observes more exactly finds again and again that the doctors know
the appropriate methods very well, but here and there they let it show that
behind the phenomena is something that they do not understand. And those who
are more reasonable expressly warn generally about dealing with these phenomena,
with this field which is so subjected to deception that even great scholars
can be fooled; hence, it cannot be warned enough about it.
Certain scholars, for whom one had
to have, otherwise, the highest respect, had this standpoint. I only mention
the Viennese researcher Benedikt, much appreciated by me,
who pointed to these phenomena again and again, already during the seventies.
He is the same researcher who established the idea of the so-called moral insanity
which is normally not understood. One does not need to agree to the theory,
also not to that which he speaks about hypnotism and magnetism. Already as a
young man he paid attention to Mesmerism and thought that something is behind
it; but he never dealt with it in such a way as for example Liébeault
and Bernheim of the Nancy school. Benedikt was that who sharply
opposed and emphasised that even Charcot warned about attempts
of interpreting these phenomena. You can nowhere find a plausible reason with
Benedikt for his opposition against the whole theory of hypnosis, but his instinctive
utterances are moving in a strangely correct line. He always says only: who
carries out experiments in this field must realise that the persons, with whom
he carries out such experiments, may fool him as well, maybe without knowing
it, as they can also provide something true for him. — He emphasised on
the other side that in the way as science wants to take hold of the matters
no results can be got.
After again a wandering hypnotist,
Hansen, had demonstrated the most horrendous experiments to the people which
scholars copied in the laboratory and were partly successful, we see magazines
taking hold of the case. Thick books are written which are cannibalised by journalism,
and these matters become questions of the day and popular writings are published,
so that everybody can have instructions of these matters in his vest pocket.
These were in particular the scholars of the Nancy school, Liébeault
and Bernheim, who interpreted these phenomena scientifically. A quality had
to be ascribed to these phenomena which makes them synonymous and belonging
to the other scientific phenomena. Thus we see then that the exterior which
is not denied by the materialists should be decisive for causing hypnosis. Bernheim
has managed to exclude all methods and admitted the verbal suggestion only:
the word which I speak to the person concerned has an effect in such a way that
he gets to this state. Hypnosis itself is an effect of suggestion. If I say:
sleep! — Or: lower the eyelids! — Et cetera, the corresponding image
is caused and this causes the effect.
Thus materialism had happily put
the phenomena of hypnosis in a coffin; thus that retreated into the background
which all those know who know a lot about these matters: that it depends on
the effect of a person on the other person; that a person has either the natural
disposition or develops it using particular methods and develops to a powerful
person important for his fellow men.
It was completely disregarded that
this personal influence had an effect. The point of view of the average mind
should be applied with which all people are on a par which does not want to
accept a development of the human being to a certain height of moral and intellectual
education. That which is important was put in a coffin.
From this point of view the whole
modern literature is written. In particular it is the philosopher Wundt
who knows nothing to do with it who says that a particular part of the brain
becomes ineffective. Also a friend of mine whom I hold in high esteem, Hans
Schmidkunz, wrote a psychology of suggestion in which he explains
in detail that these processes are only an increase of phenomena to be observed
in the everyday life which are caused naturally that one does not yet know,
however, where the explanation must be searched for.
While we have considered the history
of this fact, we have entered a kind of dead end. Nobody can find anything else
in the contemporary literature about this chapter than a more or less big aggregation
of simple, elementary facts. The effect of a person on another person is explained
more or less insignificantly in a materialistic way. But one will convince himself
of the fact above all that the official science did not cope with these facts,
and that nothing is more unjustified than if today medicine presumes to put
these phenomena in a coffin for itself if it claims that it should be the field
of medicine only, that it should be a privilege of medicine to deal with these
facts. To any really reasonable person it is clear that modern medicine knows
nothing to do with these facts and that, above all, those are right who point
to the danger of these matters. Not without reason people like Moritz Benedikt
warned about a scientific study of these matters. Not without reason they said
that even Charcot has to pay attention because these states which he causes
as an objective observer could overcome him subjectively. Not without reason
they wanted to protect science against the treatment as the Nancy school has
usually done which has achieved nothing for the really reasonable person but
worthless attempts of registration or explanation which basically mean nothing.
Quite rightly Benedikt pointed to the fact that one cannot distinguish in the
whole literature of the Nancy school which is a superficial or a positive performance
and whether one has abandoned himself to self-deception or has been cheated.
This is the instinctive judgement
of Benedikt whom certain, in particular deeper medical minds of today appreciate.
This judgement is typical because it reproaches us instinctively with the true
facts. Instinctively Benedikt points to that which it depends on. The first
one is that these matters — and Benedikt expresses this with clear words
— must not be lumped together with other to experiment with them. Hence,
he only investigates those facts which approach him without his help. If anybody
gets to natural hypnosis and suffers no change by the hypnotist, we have investigated
these phenomena scientifically. However, as soon as we exercise an influence
on our fellow men in this regard, then we do it from person to person, from
the force of a person to that of the other, then we change the state of the
other person, and then it depends on it what clings to our person how this person
is in a certain way. Those know this who know the higher methods which science
does not have at all. If you are a bad human being, an inferior human being
in a certain way, and you exercise a hypnotic influence on your fellow men,
you do harm to them. If you want to exercise such an appropriate influence so
that with it encompassing cosmic forces have no harmful effects, then you have
to be acquainted with the secrets of the higher spiritual life, and you are
able to do this only if you have developed your force to a higher level. It
is not a matter of experimenting here and there. These phenomena are those which
are exercised perpetually round us. When you enter a room and there are other
people, then interactions take place. Those are analogous to hypnotical phenomena.
If such an influence is exerted consciously, one must be worthy and capable
to exert such an influence.
Therefore, a healthy life will be
in this field only again unless the demand exists to study these phenomena according
to science, but if the old method is renewed again that somebody who has aroused
the power in himself who can be the hypnotist must develop particular higher
forces in him first. One knew this once. One knew how the phenomena are. It
was a matter of preparing the human beings that they were able to carry out
such phenomena. Only if our medical education is another again if the whole
humankind is led again to a higher moral, spiritual and intellectual level and
the human being has proved himself worthy, only if the test is carried out in
this sense, one can speak of a prosperous development of this field. Hence,
nothing is to be hoped from the modern academic treatment of hypnotism and suggestion.
They are understood in a quite wrong way. They only must be considered correctly
again. If this happens, one sees that these phenomena are basically more common
than one thinks usually. Then one understands a lot of our surroundings. Then
one also knows that one cannot popularise these phenomena beyond a certain degree
at all because these phenomena belong to the human inner development then. The
highest power is not acquired by vivisection of the spirit but by the development
of forces in us. Moral, mental, spiritual higher development is that which makes
us again worthy to speak a clear word in these fields.
Then we also understand our ancestors
again who did not want to show these matters in their deepest significance to
the secular world. One wanted to say nothing else if one spoke of the veiled
picture of the Isis that nobody is allowed to lift her veil if he is guilty.
With it one wanted to make it clear that the human being can recognise the highest
truth only if he makes himself worthy. This will throw a new meaning and a new
light on the saying: knowledge is power. — Certainly, knowledge is power.
And the higher the knowledge, the bigger is the power. The guidance of the world
history is based on such power. It is the caricature of it which science wants
to show us today. But one is allowed to attain such knowledge which wakes up
the hearts, such a power which is allowed to intervene in the hearts and freedom
of others by an insight which is good fortune for the human being at the same
time before which he stands there reverentially. Our ideal must be that our
knowledge seizes our whole being that we stand before the highest truth and
recognise that the truth which we experience in ourselves is a divine revelation
at which we look as something holy. Then we again experience knowledge as power
if knowledge is again a communion with the divine. That who unites in knowledge
with the divine has a vocation to realise the saying: knowledge is power.
Notes:
Athanasius
Kircher (1601 or 1602–1680), German Jesuit scholar and polymath.
Ars magna lucis et umbrae (1646)
Miraculous experiment…
This experiment had been already described by Daniel Schwenter (1585–1636,
mathematician) in his book Deliciae physico-mathematicae (1636).
Schwenter, however, had taken it from another book Recreationes mathematicae
(1624), written by the French (medical writer) mathematician and philosopher
Jean Leurechon (1591–1670), S. J.
Caspar Schott (1608–1666),
S. J., German mathematician and physicist
Karl Hansen (~1833–1897),
Danish hypnotist
Franz
Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), German physician. De planetarum
influxu in corpus humanum (The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body)
(1766)
William Thierry Preyer (1841–1897),
English-German physiologist. The Discovery of Hypnotism (1890)
induced a scholar …Presumably James
Braid (1795–1860), Scottish surgeon and scientist. Neurypnology
or the Rationae of Nervous Sleep, Considered in Relation with Animal Magnetism
(1843)
Abbé
Faria (1746–1819), Goan Catholic monk. The method of hypnosis
used by Faria is command, following expectancy: De la cause du sommeil
lucide ou étude de la nature de l’homme (On the cause of Lucid
Sleep in the Study of the Nature of Man) (1819)
Moritz
Benedikt (1835–1920), Austrian neurologist: Psychophysik der
Moral (Psychophysics of Moral) (1874), Hypnotismus und Suggestion. Eine
klinisch-psychologische Studie (1894)
Ambroise
Auguste Liébeault (1823 -1904), French physician, Founder of
the Nancy School or Suggestion School: Le sommeil et les états
analogues, considérés surtout du point de vue de l'action
du moral sur le physique (Sleep and its analogous states considered from
the perspective of the action of the mind upon the body (1866)
Hippolyte-Marie
Bernheim (1840–1919), French physician and neurologist: De
la Suggestion et de son Application à la Thérapeutique (1887)
[ Suggestive Therapeutics: A Treatise on the Nature and Uses of
Hypnotism (1889)]
Jean-Martin
Charcot (1825–1893), French neurologist
Wilhelm
Wundt (1832–1920), German physician, psychologist, physiologist
and philosopher: Hypnotismus und Suggestion (1892)
Hans Schmidkunz (1863–1934), Austrian
psychologist and philosopher: Psychologie der Suggestion in gemeinfasslicher
Darstellung (Psychology of Suggestion Intelligible to Everybody) (1893)
|