360 HYPNOTISM. 



The hypnotic state is one in which this snggestability 

 is experimentally heightened. 



The suggestion in the above instances is a verbal one, 

 made by another person, who is called the hypnotiser, whilst 

 the person to whom it is made is called the " subject." 



Suggestions, however, may be of a somewhat different 

 nature ; thus if a person, in a room by himself, think that 

 a slight noise he hears is made by a mouse, he will have 

 a greater or less tendency to see it. The slight noise is, 

 in this case, the suggestion. Again, if a person who is 

 inclined to stammer think that he will do so on some 

 particular occasion, he will stammer, notwithstanding any 

 voluntary efforts to the contrary. The suggestion is, in this 

 instance, an auto-suggestion. 



When experiments, made at Nancy, were first published, 

 showing what a large proportion of healthy persons are 

 susceptible to hypnotic processes, there was a general dis- 

 belief in England that healthy persons, other than of French 

 nationality, could be so influenced. But, as indeed might 

 have been suspected from the fact that this snggestability — 

 this tendency to believe without proof — is not a French 

 characteristic merely, experiments made elsewhere have 

 shown that the opinion was incorrect. Thus Wetterstrand, 

 of Stockholm, out of 718 normal individuals, hypnotised 

 G99 (97 per cent.) ; Van E-enterghem, of Amsterdam, out of 

 178 normal individuals, hypnotised 162 (90 per cent.). 



Again, corresponding to the age-variation of this normal 

 snggestability, it has been shown by the Nancy school that 

 up to the age of fourteen years all persons were influenced 

 by hypnotic processes ; and that, above this age, the number 

 of refractory subjects gradually increased, so that at the 

 age of forty years it was 12 per cent. This was also shown 

 by the number of persons who passed the first time they 



