The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Schmidkunz - Psychologie der Suggestion
Dr. Schmidkunz's work is one which it is difficult to read, and by no means easy to report upon. Qui trop embrasse peu étreint; and in seeking to extend the notion of 'suggestion' so as to find illustrations of it in every department of human life, the notion itself tends to lose all distinctness, and the author's results become most vague of outline. The book itself, in fact, is little else than a mass of 'suggestions,' humane, unprejudiced, guided by the truest feeling for the facts of human nature, but disconnected, tentative, dubious, and interrogative to such a degree that the reader fairly craves a sharp-cut and decisive formula, even a false one, to give emphasis and relief to the style. So much said, however, it must be immediately added that, like many a magic lantern picture not yet brought to focus, this book shadows forth a mass of fact which will probably some day have to be treated as an organic total, much as Dr. Schmidkunz now treats it, and which little by little will probably become more intelligible in detail.
A glance at the author's divisions will show how he conceives the magnitude of his task. The first eighty-four pages treat of suggestion in general, by objects, by persons, by the subject himself; of the proper way of conceiving of suggestion, of suggestibility, and of the conditions which favor it. The second part, going to page 158, is an account of hypnotism regarded as one of these conditions. The third part, to page 242, aims at the explanation of suggestion by psychological principles. The fourth part, to page 340, draws philosophical and practical reflections, and throws out queries sychological, logical, aesthetical, ethical, sociological, biological, therapeutical, juridical, and religious. Finally a rich collection of bibliographical and other notes and addenda fill the last sixty pages.
Dr. Schmidkunz gives no exact criterion by which to distinguish 'suggestions' from the other influences of our environment or of our inner nature. It would seem from page 54 that any new belief or conduct not preceded by deliberation or articulate reasoning, must be laid to the score of Suggestion. Whatever in our lives follows authority, fashion, or example, whatever starts up at the spell of another's personal fascination, or takes its cue from the secret hopes, fears, likings, and repugnancies of our own inner nature, must be considered as a fruit of suggestion, the law of which, according to Dr. Schmidkunz, is as follows: "Under certain circumstances the mind may be so impressed that the idea of a phenomenon, once communicated to it, develops into the phenomenon itself, or in other words, that the content of the psychical phenomenon becomes a real phenomenon" (p. 56). It is easy to see what a mass of illustrations human history affords for suggestion understood in this wide way; and Dr. Schmidkunz, by accumulating and varying his examples, does his best to make us realize the immensity of the field.
But a question now arises: If suggestion be nothing but an immediate belief in what is conceived, and if one idea is believed and acted on thus immediately, whilst another is not, what are the conditions, either in the idea itself or in the subject of the experience, which determine the latter's 'suggestive' character? Dr. Schmidkunz tells us that one idea is suggestive to one sort of subject, another to another. This difference in the subject is called by Dr. Schmidkunz his suggestive individuality, to distinguish it from his suggestibility, which means merely the degree of his liability to Suggestion. This degree is increased by certain transitory states in which he may find himself, such as sleep, intoxication by alcohol, ether, hasheesh, opium, etc., states of concentration or absent-mindedness, states of solemn or fearful emotion, etc., and these are called by our author hypnoid conditions.
Of such conditions the hypnotic trance is of course the chief. The division of the book which treats of this topic, whilst far from giving a complete account in detail of all the curious phenomena which the various operators have elicited from their trance-subjects, in a broader way discusses all the general effects of trance. Dr. Bernheim and others have of late so minimized the importance of the trance-condition as to make it seem little more than an ordinary somnolence, suggested by the operator amongst all the other things which he suggests. "Iln'y a pas d'hypnotisme," declares M. Delbœuf in the Revue de l’Hypnotisme for last November, meaning that there is nothing but affirmation on the operator's part and belief on the subject's, and that the slumber which it is the usual routine to induce is less a means of making the later suggestions succeed, than a sign that here is a person in whom they will succeed. But our author, contrary to what one might expect, admits (pp. 101-103) that the hypnotic trance, however closely allied it may be to ordinary sleep, is not identical therewith. It contains in an intense degree that element of 'suggestibility' ab extrawhich in common sleep either lies 'latent' or shows itself but slightly. Moreover, it includes phenomena (not, indeed, in all subjects, but in many) which seem to be spontaneous physiological incidents of the trance itself, and not merely effects of the operator's conscious Or unconscious suggestions. Such are lethargy, catalepsy, anaesthesia, and amnesia on waking up. In short, we must regard hypnotic trance as a genuinely peculiar state, carrying increased suggestibility in its train.
In the next division, Dr. Schmidkunz tries his hand at an ultimate explanation. He gives us a number of chapters on the various forces and factors of the inner life, on the tendency of ideas to persist and to produce motor effects, on judgment, emotion, instinct, will, sympathy, imitation, etc. These chapters are full of penetrating glimpses, of ingenious turns and apt quotations, but their outcome is far from precise. It amounts to little more than the conclusion that the involuntary life is the seat of more energetic forces than the voluntary life; that Judgment, Reflection, and Will yield when the blinder, deeper, more unconscious and antediluvian tendencies of our nature come into activity. Suggestion unchains these tendencies, — herein lies its positive force. In the trance and other 'hypnoid' conditions, "bricht eben die Natur aus ihren sonst geschwächten gefesselten Elementargewalten hervor, und dies ist erst das Unheimliche, dann das 'Mystische' an solchen Zuständen. . . . Was wir an Herrschaft über ein psychisches Phänomen gewinnen das verlieren wir an Kraft derselben" (pp. 223-224). But how or why suggestion should unchain these more primordial forces, Dr. Schmidkunz fails to show.
In the last division of the book there is a good chapter on psycho-therapeutics, filled with quotations from Dr. Gerster (whose contributions throughout the work seem full of sense and point) . There is also a chapter on the forensic relations of hypnotism (who shall practice suggestion? — crimes accomplished by its means, etc.), in which the author admits the possibility of disasters, but advises that the power of existing laws to deal with them be well tested, before special legislation is invoked. In this wise council the present reviewer heartily agrees.
M. Delboeuf, in his delightful essay, Le Magnetisme Animal, describes Dr. Bernheim suggesting to a patient that he shall be able to walk, after friction down his spine. The friction being made, the subject fails to move. "Ah!" says the doctor, "this is one of those patients who only recover when the friction is from below upwards. Just see! "On the friction being made in the new direction, the patient walks immediately. "Mon Dieu!" adds the Belgian philosopher, "taken roughly, the phenomenon is simple enough. The first suggestion was not efficacious, we say, the second was so. ... But if we penetrate below the surface, we soon lose our foothold. This man's soul, at the command of your voice, strikes the body with powerlessness to move. And now when this same voice asks that the spell be undone, the soul does not undo it. What new resistance is this? What voice this time told the soul not to obey you? What has taken place in this brain, so suggestible until now? And presently a change in the order of the words, in the tone of the voice, removes the spell. How so? Suppose it were not removed? Might it have remained, in spite of the hypnotizer's command? Here are mysteries, real mysteries, and les savants improvisés do not even suspect them to exist." M. Delboeuf speaks truly: Herr Schmidkunz indeed is not a savant improvisé, and his book certainly does not ignore the mystery; yet with all its copiousness and ingenuity, it hardly advances our knowledge a single step. Why do 'mind-curers' so often excite the 'imagination' to heal the body, when regular practitioners fail, with their far more impressive incantations and paraphernalia? Whence are these obstinate 'auto-suggestions' which thwart those of the hypnotizer? The truth is, that all the more distinctive phenomena of suggestion run dead against the ordinary laws of belief and practice. Why does a man who holds his own obstinately against every opponent in all the ordinary arguments of life submit to everything you tell him after he has made himself passive for a minute and you have performed a little hocus-pocus of passes over his face? The philosophy of the subject probably lies in the direction of Messrs. Myers's, Binet's, and Janet's researches into the different strata of which personality consists. The hypnotic stratum must be thrown uppermost, as in the trance; or in some way the suggestion must penetrate to it and tap it, or there will be no effect. What the stratum is in itself is a mystery. Mr. Myers's recent notion that hysteria is a disease of it seems a promising one. Our author would seem to regard it as a sort of overlaid ancestral deposit. It may be that; but Myers's various essays on the automatic life, alterations of personality, etc., in the Physical Research Society's Proceedings, are a far more effective attempt at getting to close quarters with it than anything in Dr. Schmidkunz's pages. Dr. Schmidkunz does not seem to know even Myers's name. To revert to our first characterization of his book, — it is admirably humane and unprejudiced, and gives an impression of decided originality of mind; but it is distractingly diffuse and inconclusive.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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