Hypnotism Today
- Author:
Lecron, B.A., and J.
Bordeaux, M.A. Foreword by M. H. Erickson, M.D. Wm. Heinemann Medical Books Ltd. 25s.
This is a timely and most useful book. Written by two consulting psychologists and introduced in a foreword by a psychiatrist, Dr Milton A. Erickson, it covers the whole ground of the subject in fifteen closely packed chapters. Outstanding among these are the chapters on ” Principles of Suggestion ” Posthypnotic Suggestion, Autohypnosis and Autosuggestion ” Theories of Hypnosis ” A System of Brief Hypnoanalysis ” and ” Research in Hypnotism There is also a tolerably complete bibliography. It may be a matter of surprise to many analytical psychotherapists at the present day, who have assimilated the teachings of Freud and other leading exponents of deep mental analysis, that there could still be a public, and a need, for such a book as this. But, quite apart from the desirability or undesirability of the application of the method of hypnotism in modern psychotherapy, there continues to be an emphatic need for the adequate understanding of hypnosis, its laws, and its relation to kindred states of mind. No modern psychologist can afford to be ignorant of the subject, and no modern psychologist can evade the question of the normality or abnormality of the state of hypnosis or the justification of the use of hypnotism in special cases.
As an exposition of almost all sides of the subject this book is excellent. Where it falls short is in an inadequate appreciation of the practical and medical (not the merely theoretical) differences of mild states of hypnosis or increased suggestibility from deeper singes, such as that of ” artificial somnambulism and the unaesirability?indeed the danger to the subject?of repeated hypnotizations at the deeper levels. Perhaps this is not unconnected with the fact that neither of the authors of the book possesses a medical qualification and may, therefore, be not fully alive to the similarity of certain symptoms of schizophrenia and of the more severe types of hysteria to some of the more striking manifestations of deep hypnosis. It is still questionable whether any subject who falls into a state of really deep hypnosis is thoroughly normal. It is at least possible that repeated deep hypnotization may make even a relatively normal subject somewhat abnormal. But milder methods of suggestion and autosuggestion, especially when directed to produce adequate neuromuscular relaxation in the patient, are of the greatest value. W.B.
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