DISCOVERY 



295 



which the subject makes in order to counteract this 

 suggestion are not merel\- without the desired effect, 

 but they actually run counter to the subject's conscious 

 wishes, and tend to intensify the suggestion " (p. Ii6). 



(4) The Law of Subconscious Teleology. " When 

 the end has been suggested, the subconscious finds 

 means for its realisation " (p. 117). 



The first three of these laws may perhaps best be 

 illustrated by a case of spontaneous autosuggestion of 

 a particularly unpleasant kind which in some form 

 has occurred to the experience of most people. We 

 ma\- suppose that you have been told to walk along 

 a plank 6 inches wide, resting on the floor, without 

 stepping off on either side. You will find that you 

 are able to do so without any difficulty. If, however, 

 a plank of the same width and of the same rigidity 

 were supported at a great height above the ground 

 so that there was a sheer drop of several hundred 

 feet on both sides, and you attempted to walk along 

 it, j-ou would certainly fall off. This is a case of 

 realising the idea of falling off by spontaneous auto- 

 suggestion. Spontaneous attention is unavoidably 

 caught by the idea of falling oft", and there is a very 

 powerful emotional accompaniment (of fear or horror) 

 to this idea. These are the conditions described by 

 the first two laws as those under which ideas become 

 realised by spontaneous autosuggestion. If either 

 you could manage not to think about falling off at 

 all, or if you could think about it without any powerful 

 emotion, the danger of falling off would be less. At 

 the same time, the law of reversed effort is illustrated 

 by the fact that your voluntar^• efforts to retain your 

 balance will not only be useless, but will tend to 

 defeat that end. 



As an example of the Law of Subconscious Teleology, 

 we'may take a case where what is suggested is either 

 the formation or the cure of some bodily symptom 

 in a disease. It is common for Swiss girls both to 

 produce and to cure warts by autosuggestion. It is 

 clear that they have no knowledge of the bodily 

 changes which produce the warts. The law asserts 

 that this is not necessary for successful autosuggestion. 

 When the end (the formation of the wart) has been 

 suggested, the subconscious finds the means for its 

 realisation (the bodily changes which will produce it). 

 This is obviously a law of the first importance for the 

 use of autosuggestion in the cure of diseases. 



The ways in which Dr. Baudouin finds that spon- 

 taneous autosuggestion affects us in ordinary life are 

 numerous. The habit of discussing and giving names 

 to our ailments produces an atmosphere of spontaneous 

 autosuggestion of disease which is probably very 

 fruitful in the production of disease. Even when 

 there is an organic ground of disease, the pain in the 

 diseased part attracts attention to it, and thus spon- 



taneous autosuggestion adds something to already 

 existing diseases. He also mentions clairvoyants and 

 such people, whose prophecies tend to germinate in 

 our minds and to realise themselves, so that a 

 prophecy of misfortune may result in that misfortune. 

 There are, of course, also spontaneous autosuggestions 

 wliich are desirable — thoughts of strength, success, 

 health, etc. It is possible to combat the effects of 

 noxious spontaneous autosuggestions by means of 

 reflective autosuggestion. 



The difficulty in the practice of reflective auto- 

 suggestion is to find an efficient substitute for spon- 

 taneous attention. If a voluntary effort is made to 

 think of and realise an idea, the law of reversed effort 

 shows us that it will not be successful. It is for this 

 reason that many persons fail in autosuggestion. 

 They are told to concentrate on an idea. For them 

 concentration means an intense voluntary effort to 

 think of it ; and intense voluntary effort is the 

 condition under which autosuggestion is most certain 

 to fail. Those who have experienced the effects of 

 intense voluntary effort to go to sleep know the 

 condition of hopeless wakefulness which such an 

 effort induces. It will be noticed later that Baudouin 

 himself uses the word " concentration " for a method 

 of reflective autosuggestion, but he is careful to 

 explain that he does not mean by it any kind of volun- 

 tary effort. The practical problem to make successful 

 reflective autosuggestion possible is to discover some 

 condition in which voluntary effort is as small as 

 possible, but in which the mind can be kept occupied 

 %vith the particular thought to be suggested. 



The condition between sleeping and waking, which 

 we have already noticed as one of high suggestibility, 

 is a state in which spontaneous autosuggestions are 

 particularly liable to realise themselves. All writers 

 on autosuggestion recommend that a similar state 

 should be induced, in which there is a certain emptiness 

 of mind and suspension of the mental functions. Some- 

 times, however, they write as if this were a state to be 

 attained by an act of will, and their followers find 

 themselves misled into making strenuous efforts where 

 a relaxation of effort is the principal necessity. 



One of the characteristics of this half-waking con- 

 dition is what is called the outcropping of the subcon- 

 scious. The mind ceases to be occupied with the 

 directed thinking in words which is a voluntary 

 activity, and instead becomes filled with a succession 

 of vague images which are surface effects of the 

 repressed material in the unconscious. A similar 

 condition is found in reverie, that is, in the state in 

 which we have relaxed the voluntary' activity of the 

 mind. It is found that those to whom this state of 

 outcropping is most normal are those to whom auto- 

 suggestion is easiest, as artists, women, and childrea 



