Hypnosis: is it a pathological state peculiar to hysterics, or a general effect of suggestion?

Jean-Martin Charcot, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

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.12345

Sources

  1. In fact, we all know that the desire to deceive, even without interest, by a kind of disinterested worship of art for its own sake [culte de Tart pour I'art], though sometimes with the idea of making- a sensation, to excite pity, &c., is a common enough occurrence, particularly in hysteria.
    Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III, pp. 15–18
  2. If, by significant 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 series of ideas and movements. And again, in a manner still more perfect, suggestion can be effected by the aid of speech, either alone, or better, combined with gestures.
    Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III, p. 293
  3. SeeR. Quain, ' Diet, of Medicine,' London, 1882, ai-t. Shoch. I regret that I am unable to dwell longer on the connection which I have indicated between the mental state produced by nervous shock, and that which characterises the somnambulic period of hypnotism; but I think enough has been said to attract your attention to this point and to induce you to make it the subject of your meditations.
    Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III, p. 336
  4. And now to come back to our patient. He is, as has been shown, the subject of "hip disease" of an undoubted hysterical nature, without any admixture, without any organic lesion. Wo may therefore affirm that he will probably recover sooner or later; but when will the cure be effected, and what means must one employ to arrive at that result?
    Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III, pp. 333–334
  5. I demonstrated to you moreover that this paralysis could be produced segment by segment in subjects under hypnotism, either by means of verbal suggestion, or by the traumatic action of a blow on the shoulder, which constituted, as one might say, a veritable traumatic suggestion.
    Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Series III, pp. 335–336

Where the argument is made

  • The account of hypnotism as a somatic, pathological condition of hysterical patients passing through lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism

How the argument was received

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.