ected with imposture and charlatanism. This results from the
incapacity of most men to think in a psychological and philosophical
manner, to observe for themselves and to take into account the
connection which exists between the mind and cerebral activity.

I must point out the common error of many physicians, who do not
understand the psychological nature of hypnotism, and who place it,
like Dubois, in antinomy with psychotherapy. Hypnotism and suggestion
in the waking state are one and the same thing; but what the
physicians I have mentioned understand by suggestion in the waking
state--psychotherapy, action by will power, etc.--is only a chaos of
misapplied terms and psychological phenomena, only half understood by
them. Sleep by suggestion is only one of the phenomena of suggestion.

I must refer the reader to Bernheim's book on "_La Suggestion et ses
Applications a la Therapeutique_," and to my book on hypnotism ("_Der
Hypnotismus und die Suggestive Psychotherapie._" Stuttgart, 1902), for
I cannot enter into the details here. I will, however, attempt to make
clear the action of suggestion in order to explain its connection with
the sexual sensations and sentiments.

Suggestion consists in the action of ideas or representations on the
activity of the brain in general, and on some of its activities in
particular. The terms _idea-force_ and _ideoplasty_ have been
employed; but all ideas are at the same time forces and are more or
less ideoplastic according to the nature and intensity of the cerebral
activity which corresponds to them. Every representation which appears
in our consciousness is at the same time a cerebral activity. I will
explain by the aid of an example the relation which exists between the
play of our _conscious_ ideas and what is incorrectly called our
_unconscious_ cerebral activity.

For reasons which are too long to explain here, I call _subconscious_
all which is usually called unconscious, because I maintain that there
is probably nothing unconscious in our nervous activity, and that what
appears to be so is in reality accompanied by an introspection,
subordinated like its corresponding activity to the great and clear
introspection of the higher brain, which accompanies the concentrated
and mobile activity of what we call our attention in the waking state.
No doubt, we do not as a rule perceive our subconscious activities,
for want of sufficient intensity in their association with the series