wish you to go
to sleep, but if you can get into the drowsy condition preceding natural
sleep, my suggestions are more likely to be responded to." I explain
that I do not expect this to happen at once, although it does occur in
rare instances, but it is the repetition of the suggestions made in this
particular way which brings about the result. Thus, from the very first
treatment, the patient is subjected to two distinct processes, the
object of one being to induce the drowsy, suggestible condition, that of
the other to cure or relieve disease.

I wish particularly to mention that although I speak of hypnotism and
hypnosis--and it is almost impossible to avoid doing so--I rarely
attempt to induce so-called hypnosis, and find that patients respond to
treatment as readily, and much more quickly, now that I start curative
suggestions and treatment simultaneously, than they did in the days when
I waited until hypnosis was induced before making curative suggestions.

I have obtained good results in treating all forms of hysteria,
including _grande hysterie_, neurasthenia, certain forms of insanity,
dipsomania and chronic alcoholism, morphinomania and other drug habits,
vicious and degenerate children, obsessions, stammering, chorea,
seasickness, and all other forms of functional nervous disturbances.

It is impossible to discuss the different theories in detail here, but I
will briefly summarise the more important points, (1) Hypnotism, as a
science, rests on the recognition of the subjective nature of its
phenomena. (2) The theories of Charcot and the Salpetriere school are
practically a reproduction of mesmeric error. (3) Liebeault and his
followers combated the views of the Salpetriere school and successfully
substituted their own, of which the following are the important points:
(_a_) Hypnosis is a physiological condition, which can be induced in the
healthy. (_b_) In everyone there is a tendency to respond to suggestion,
but in hypnosis this condition is artificially increased. (_c_)
Suggestion explains all. Despite the fact that the members of the Nancy
school regard the condition as purely physiological and simply an
exaggeration of the normal, they consider it, in its profound stages at
all events, a form of automatism.

These and other views of the Nancy school have been questioned by
several observers. As Myers justly pointed out, although suggestion is
the artifice used to excite the phenomena, it does not cre