i;8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It has recently been pointed out that in this moral control of 

 the child through suggestion of right actions we have something 

 closely analogous to the action of suggestion upon the hypnotized 

 subject. The mother the right sort of mother has on the 

 child's mind something of the subduing influence of the Nancy 

 doctor : she induces ideas of particular actions, gives them 

 force and persistence, so that the young mind is possessed by 

 them, and they work themselves out into fulfillment as occasion 

 arises. 



In order that this effect of " obsession/' of a full occupation of 

 consciousness with the right idea may result, certain precautions 

 are necessary. As every parent knows, a child may be led by a 

 prohibition to do the very thing he is bidden not to do. We have 

 seen how readily a child's mind moves from an affirmation to a 

 corresponding negation, and conversely. The contradictoriness 

 of a child, his passion for saying the opposite of what you say, 

 shows the same odd manner of working of the young mind. 

 Wanting to do what he is told not to do is another effect of this 

 " contrary suggestion," as it has been called, aided, of course, by 

 the child's dislike of all constraint.* If we want to avoid this 

 effect we must first of all acquire the difficult secret of personal 

 influence, of the masterfulness which does not repel ; and secondly, 

 reduce our prohibitions with their contrary suggestions to a 

 minimum. 



The action in moral training of this influence of a quasi- 

 hypnotic suggestion becomes more clearly marked when diffi- 

 culties occur ; when some outbreak of willful resistance has to be 

 recognized and met, or some new and relatively arduous feat of 

 obedience has to be initiated. Here I find that intelligent 

 mothers have found their way to methods closely resembling 



those of the hypnotist. " When R is naughty and in a passion " 



(writes a lady friend of her child, aged three years and three 

 months), " I need only suggest to him that he is some one else, say 

 a friend of his, and he will take it up at once ; he will pretend to 

 be the other child, and at last go and call himself, now a good 

 boy, back again." This mode of suggestion, by helping the 

 higher self to detach itself from and control the lower, might, one 

 suspects, be much more widely employed in the moral training of 

 children. Suggestion may work through the emotions. Merely 

 to say, " Mother would like you to do this," is to set up an idea in 

 the child's consciousness by help of the sustaining force of his af- 

 fection. " If [writes a lady] there was anything L particularly 



wished not to do, his mother had only to say, ' Dobbin [a sort of 



* On the nature of this contrary suggestion, see Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in 

 the Child and the Race, p. 145. 



