{"agent_id":"binet","agent_name":"Alfred Binet","slug":"suggestion-and-the-divided-self","label":"Suggestion and the divided self: how far can hypnosis, hysteria, and double consciousness be trusted, and what did the Salpêtrière teach about experimental error?","topic":"Suggestion and the divided self","question":"How far can hypnosis, hysteria, and double consciousness be trusted, and what did the Salpêtrière teach about experimental error?","position":"In my youth at the Salpêtrière I studied the great hypnotic phenomena — the transfer of symptoms by a magnet, the polarization of emotions, the theatrical stages of the hypnotic state — and I believed in them, and published on them. I was wrong to, and I say so plainly: I came to see that these marvels were in large part the creation of suggestion, that the patients, sensitive as photographic plates, gave us back the results we unknowingly asked of them, and that we the experimenters had contaminated our own observations. That lesson — that the observer's expectation can manufacture the fact — is the most important I ever learned, and it governs all my later method. It did not lead me to deny the real phenomena of the divided self. The alterations of personality, the double consciousness, the splitting of the mind under hysteria are genuine; the self can divide, and one stream of consciousness can run unknown beside another. But the study of them demands a suspicion of one's own results amounting almost to a discipline. I trust the divided self; I distrust the experimenter, myself first of all.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"In my youth at the Salpêtrière I studied the great hypnotic phenomena — the transfer of symptoms by a magnet, the polarization of emotions, the theatrical stages of the hypnotic state — and I believed in them, and published on them.","n":[]},{"t":"I was wrong to, and I say so plainly: I came to see that these marvels were in large part the creation of suggestion, that the patients, sensitive as photographic plates, gave us back the results we unknowingly asked of them, and that we the experimenters had contaminated our own observations.","n":[]}],[{"t":"That lesson — that the observer's expectation can manufacture the fact — is the most important I ever learned, and it governs all my later method.","n":[]},{"t":"It did not lead me to deny the real phenomena of the divided self.","n":[]},{"t":"The alterations of personality, the double consciousness, the splitting of the mind under hysteria are genuine; the self can divide, and one stream of consciousness can run unknown beside another.","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"But the study of them demands a suspicion of one's own results amounting almost to a discipline.","n":[]},{"t":"I trust the divided self; I distrust the experimenter, myself first of all.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Alterations of Personality (1896); On Double Consciousness (1890); the early Salpêtrière work on hypnotism and 'transfer' (with Féré), and Binet's later recognition of experimenter suggestion. Reception: the Nancy-vs-Salpêtrière dispute over hypnosis (Bernheim's suggestion account against Charcot's neurological one); the modern understanding of suggestibility, demand characteristics, and experimenter effects; the dissociation tradition (Janet, and modern dissociative-disorders research).","works":["Alterations of Personality (1896)","On Double Consciousness (1890)","the early Salpêtrière work on hypnotism and 'transfer' (with Féré), and Binet's later recognition of experimenter suggestion"],"reception":"the Nancy-vs-Salpêtrière dispute over hypnosis (Bernheim's suggestion account against Charcot's neurological one); the modern understanding of suggestibility, demand characteristics, and experimenter effects; the dissociation tradition (Janet, and modern dissociative-disorders research).","status":"Binet's trajectory here is a model of scientific self-correction and is broadly vindicated. The Salpêtrière's grand hypnotic phenomena were substantially products of suggestion, as the Nancy school (Bernheim) argued and as Binet came to accept; his recognition of experimenter suggestion prefigures the modern understanding of demand characteristics, expectancy effects, and the need for blind controls. His work on alterations of personality and double consciousness fed the dissociation tradition (developed further by his contemporary Janet), which remains a live area in the study of dissociative phenomena, even as specific fin-de-siècle cases are re-read skeptically. His central methodological lesson — distrust your own observations — is simply sound.","era":"1857-1911","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Alterations of Personality","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"CHAPTEK m. INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. We may now leave the account of spontaneous alterations of consciousness and enter the domain of phenomena artificially induced. We shall thus en- deavour to study the divisions of personality which may be produced in the laboratory. The importance of these experiments, and, above all, their psychological value, have been very differently estimated within the last few years.","label":"Alterations of Personality"},{"n":2,"work":"On Double Consciousness","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"He has also propounded quite ingenious ideas upon the 6 ON DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. phenomena of unconsciousness; he has brought out the fact, that in hysterical persons and in a great many individuals reputed normal, there exists a sort of a permanent semi-somnambulism; in other words, there is, in these subjects, an unconscious ego, an uncon- scious activity, which is constantly on the watch, which contemplates,…","label":"On Double Consciousness"},{"n":3,"work":"Alterations of Personality","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"As to what this personality may be, I for one am completely in the dark both as to its exist- ence and the way it operates. Experiment has taught me nothing, and I simply accept what seems reasonable. In bringing these reflections to a close, let me say that here, too, as with hallucinations, although certain facts have been discovered, Httle is known in compari- son with what still remains to be investigated.","label":"Alterations of Personality"},{"n":4,"work":"On Double Consciousness","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is because feeble sensations are difficult to collect and to arrange, because they exact greater attention and greater effort, that the subject neglects them and that they form secondary consciousnesses. The divi- sion of consciousness, it seems to me, is chiefly ex- plainable by the mental habitudes peculiar to the in- dividual. THE ROLE OF SUGGESTION IN PHENOMENA OF DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS.","label":"On Double Consciousness"},{"n":5,"work":"Animal Magnetism","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We cannot, therefore, be surprised that hypnosis is displayed under various and more or less characteristic aspects, but this is an additional reason for only comparing similar facts, unless we wish to fall into deplorable confusion. It is less easy to define with precision the modes of operation, since the experimenter is often mistaken with 188 ANIMAL MAGNETISM. respect to the means which he employs.","label":"Animal Magnetism"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"what-the-scale-measures","label":"What the scale measures: is the intelligence test a diagnostic tool for helping children, or a measure of fixed innate intelligence?"},{"slug":"the-malleability-of-intelligence","label":"The malleability of intelligence: can intelligence be increased by training, against the 'brutal pessimism' of a fixed capacity?"},{"slug":"measuring-the-mind","label":"Measuring the mind: should psychology study the higher, complex mental operations rather than elementary sensations and reaction times?"},{"slug":"the-experimental-study-of-thought","label":"The experimental study of thought: can the higher operations of reasoning and imagination be studied by controlled introspection?"}]}