It has recently been pointed out that in this moral control of the child through suggestion of right actions we have something closely analogous to the action of suggestion upon the hypnotized subject. The mother—the right sort of mother—has on the child's mind something of the subduing influence of the Nancy doctor: she induces ideas of particular actions, gives them force and persistence, so that the young mind is possessed by them, and they work themselves out into fulfillment as occasion arises.
In order that this effect of "obsession," of a full occupation of consciousness with the right idea may result, certain precautions are necessary. As every parent knows, a child may be led by a prohibition to do the very thing he is bidden not to do. We have seen how readily a child's mind moves from an affirmation to a corresponding negation, and conversely. The contradictoriness of a child, his passion for saying the opposite of what you say, shows the same odd manner of working of the young mind. Wanting to do what he is told not to do is another effect of this "contrary suggestion," as it has been called, aided, of course, by the child's dislike of all constraint.[1] If we want to avoid this effect we must first of all acquire the difficult secret of personal influence, of the masterfulness which does not repel; and secondly, reduce our prohibitions with their contrary suggestions to a minimum.
The action in moral training of this influence of a quasi-hypnotic suggestion becomes more clearly marked when difficulties occur; when some outbreak of willful resistance has to be recognized and met, or some new and relatively arduous feat of obedience has to be initiated. Here I find that intelligent mothers have found their way to methods closely resembling those of the hypnotist. "When R is naughty and in a passion" (writes a lady friend of her child, aged three years and three months), "I need only suggest to him that he is some one else, say a friend of his, and he will take it up at once; he will pretend to be the other child, and at last go and call himself, now a good boy, back again." This mode of suggestion, by helping the higher self to detach itself from and control the lower, might, one suspects, be much more widely employed in the moral training of children. Suggestion may work through the emotions. Merely to say, "Mother would like you to do this," is to set up an idea in the child's consciousness by help of the sustaining force of his affection. "If [writes a lady] there was anything L particularly wished not to do, his mother had only to say, 'Dobbin [a sort of
- ↑ On the nature of this contrary suggestion, see Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race, p. 145.
