The Hypnotic State Scoops

Occasionally it is desirable to make the subject speak. Neurotic patients, for instance, may suffer from repressions or complexes rooted in their childhood experiences. In order to bring back these distant memories and thus to relieve an ailment or to give a clue to it, the subject is asked relevant questions and is urged to tell whatever episodes he can recall. In the terminology of Breuer and the psychoanalysts, this procedure is known as "catharsis", can be used with or without hypnosis, and is supposed to bring a "psychic trauma" back to consciousness and let it work itself off. I disagree with Freud's interpretation of the phenomenon, but the method helps, indeed, to remove old inhibitions. Whereas the subject in the trance is unable to say a word on his own initiative and appears to be, as it were, totally mute, his faculty of speech is restored almost instantaneously, as soon as the practician says, "I wish to ask you several questions. Tell me, please . . ." For several seconds the subject may have visible and audible difficulties, but soon he overcomes all the handicaps, and speech flows henceforth almost as freely as in natural conditions, though perhaps in a somewhat slower tempo; and even these remaining peculiarities can be removed by additional suggestion. If necessary, the subject can also be made to write, to walk, and to perform other actions, simple or complex, depending on what suggestion is given. And throughout the performance, he remains in the trance, keenly susceptible to the hypnotist's directions, till he is finally aroused from the state.