{"agent_id":"charcot","agent_name":"Jean-Martin Charcot","slug":"hypnosis","label":"Hypnosis: is it a pathological state peculiar to hysterics, or a general effect of suggestion?","topic":"Hypnosis","question":"Is it a pathological state peculiar to hysterics, or a general effect of suggestion?","position":"Hypnosis, as I studied it, is a pathological state — a somatic condition into which the hysteric can be thrown, with its own regular physical stages, identifiable like any neurological syndrome. It is not a parlour trick of the imagination but a state of the nervous system.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Hypnosis, as I studied it, is a pathological state — a somatic condition into which the hysteric can be thrown, with its own regular physical stages, identifiable like any neurological syndrome.","n":[]},{"t":"It is not a parlour trick of the imagination but a state of the nervous system.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"The account of hypnotism as a somatic, pathological condition of hysterical patients passing through lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism. Reception: Bernheim and the Nancy school's demonstration that hypnosis is suggestion, inducible in ordinary people and not a disease at all — the dispute Charcot lost.","works":["The account of hypnotism as a somatic, pathological condition of hysterical patients passing through lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism"],"reception":"Bernheim and the Nancy school's demonstration that hypnosis is suggestion, inducible in ordinary people and not a disease at all — the dispute Charcot lost.","status":"Here the Nancy school had the better of me, and I will say so as a fact of the history: Bernheim showed that hypnosis is suggestion, that it works on the sound as on the sick, and that the stages I took for a disease were themselves shaped by what my clinic expected. My somatic theory of hypnosis stood in tension with the psychological account, and the psychological account prevailed.","era":"1825-1893","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"In fact, we ail know that the désire to deceive, even without interest, by a kind of disinterested worship of art for its own sake [culte de Fart pour Part], though sometimes with the idea of making a sensation, to excite pity, &c., is a common enough occur- rence, particularly in hysteria. THE CATALEPTIC STATE.","label":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III"},{"n":2,"work":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"I demonstrated to you moreover tliat tliis paralysis could be produced seg- ment by segment in subjects undor liypnotism, either by means o£ verbal suggestion, or by tlie traumatic action of a blow on tlie slioulder, wiiicb constituted, as oiie miglit say, a véritable traumatic suggestion.","label":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III"},{"n":3,"work":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"For an analogous reason, if you flex the entire hand, the fingers can more easily be brought into a condition of complète extension. Let us now consider the combined action of the flexors of the hand and those of the fingers; hère, also, there is a sort of antagonism. Thus, in order to strongly flex the fingers NOT SIMULATION.","label":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III"},{"n":4,"work":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"If, by siguificant gestures, an object or an animal is figured in space, that animal or that imaginary object will appear to the eyes of the hypnotised person as real, and will call into action a corresponding séries of ideas and move- ments. And again, in a nianner still more perfect, sugges- tion can be effected by the aid of speech, either alone, or better, combined with gestures.","label":"Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-grande-hyst-rie","label":"The grande hystérie: is hysteria a fixed neurological disease, or an artifact of the Salpêtrière?"},{"slug":"traumatic-paralysis-and-the-dynamic-lesion","label":"Traumatic paralysis and the dynamic lesion: can an idea produce a bodily disease?"}]}