brought his imagination to his aid, and thought himself to be embracing a man instead of a woman.
He now realized that his ideal—to consummate marriage—was impossible. He felt himself very unfortunate, and dissatisfied with life. Besides, it forced itself upon him that morally he was lowered, because he could not overcome his inclination for his own sex, and his friendship for respectable men of his circle was degraded by sexual feelings. In his consultation with me, the patient was unending in the description of his painful situation. His ideal was marriage. He longed for it, for purely ethical reasons. He thought of it as something holy; but the begetting of children, the sexual act, was very repugnant to him. At the same time, he saw that he could not really marry without being potent. Would not hypnotic suggestion exercise a favorable influence on his sexual life? He had not the energy of a man of normal sexual condition. He seemed to himself to be all wrong. He would endure all—to be poor and miserable—if he could but have a normal sexual inclination.
When the patient was gently told of the congenital and deep constitutional significance of his sexual anomaly, and shown that, therefore, the creation of a normal sexual condition was doubtful, he thought that he would be satisfied to remain in his condition. But he wished to know whether it were not possible to eradicate his inclination for men, without attempting to create an equivalent for women; and if, in hypnosis, it could not be suggested to him that, in the future, men be a matter of indifference to him, and that, in intercourse with his friends, he no longer be excited sexually. Such a result would elevate very much his moral feeling, and make him satisfied and unembarrassed in social relations with his friends.
The possibility of such suggestive removal of feelings by hypnosis could not be gainsaid, though he was in doubt as to whether he could be hypnotized or not, since the hypnoscope had proved to have no effect upon him.
Out of pity and scientific interest, I decided to make an immediate attempt at hypnosis, after Bernheim’s method.
The patient passed easily into a condition of deep lethargy, and, in a drawling voice, repeated the following suggestion: “I feel that, from this time, I am sexually indifferent to men; and, that a man is as sexually indifferent to me as a woman.”
When I counted three,—having suggested previously that he awake at three,—the patient came to himself, as if out of a deep sleep, and performed immediately the post-hypnotic suggestion to open the door of the stove. He said that he had not lost consciousness entirely, that he had felt as one paralyzed and without will, and that he had felt a peculiar creeping sensation in all his limbs.
After five days the patient came again. In manner he was a different person, and he said, joyfully, that he felt like another man. Energy and will-power—the loss of which he had felt so keenly—had
