598 PSYCHOLOGY. 



nal vessels and spasm of the accommodation are also re- 

 ported. 



The theory of Suggestion denies that there is any special 

 hypnotic state worthy of the name of trance or neurosis. 

 All the symptoms above described, as well as those to be 

 described hereafter, are results of that mental suscepti- 

 bility which we all to some degree possess, of yielding 

 assent to outward suggestion, of affirming what we strongly 

 conceive, and of acting in accordance with what we are 

 made to expect. The bodily symptoms of the Salpetriere 

 patients are all of them results of expectation and training. 

 The first patients accidental!}^ did certain things which 

 their doctors thought typical and caused to be repeated. 

 The subsequent subjects 'caught on' and followed the 

 established tradition. In proof of this the fact is urged 

 that the classical three stages and their grouped symptoms 

 have only been reported as spontaneously occurring, so far, 

 at the Salpetriere, though they may be superinduced by 

 deliberate suggestion, in patients anywhere found. The 

 ocular symptoms, the flushed face, accelerated breathing, 

 etc., are said not to be sj-mptoms of the passage into the 

 hypnotic state as such, but merely consequences of the 

 strain on the eyes when the method of looking at a bright 

 object is used. They are absent in the subjects at Nancy, 

 where simple verbal suggestion is employed. The various 

 reflex efi^ects (aphasia, echolalia, imitation, etc.) are but 

 habits induced by the influence of the operator, who uncon- 

 sciously urges the subject into the direction in which he 

 would prefer to have him go. The influence of the magnet, 

 the opposite efi'ects of upward and downward passes, etc., 

 are similarly explained. Even that sleepy and inert condi- 

 tion, the advent of which seems to be the j^i'ime condition of 

 farther symptoms being developed, is said to be merely due 

 to the fact that the mind expects it to come ; whilst its influ- 

 ence on the other symptoms is not physiological, so to speak, 

 but psychical, its own easy realization by suggestion simply 

 encouraging the subject to expect that ulterior suggestions 

 will be realized with equal ease. The radical defenders of 

 the suggestion-theory are thus led to deny the very exist- 



