Hypnotism

[Gr. hypnos, sleep.] ( Psychol. ) A term now used to describe the scientific aspect of a series of phenomena which have been known in history from 1842 as Braidism (from Dr. James Braid, of Man--n. A person affected with debility, lowne of spirits, or chester), Mesmerism (from Mesmer, 1766), animal mag dria or hypochondriasis; melancholy; dispirited; disordered in imagination. netism, second sight, . Within the last thirty years Hypochondriacal, a. That relates to hypo chon the facts in this department of obscure and somewhat ghostly appearance have been adequately investigated. with the result that there is now a new department of psychology and a new method of investigating the activities of the mind. The facts of hypnotism-understanding the word to cover all the so-called sciences known by the names mentioned above-may be briefly thrown together. Any normal person may be thrown into a peculiar trancelike condition of body and mind by the steady concentration of the attention for a greater or le er period of time upon a single object. This is usually best accomplished by the agency of another person who takes the rôle of hypnotizer. This second person has no unusual power, however; he is only the instrument of holding the subject's attention and convincing him that the experiment is going to succeed. Any artificial show of mystery such as pa es, incantations, .-is quite without value, except as it impre es the subject's mind and leads him to concentrate himself and believe in the reality of the expected result. That this is true is shown by the not unusual case of a person's hypnotiz ing himself (so-called Auto -suggestion). The condition into which the hypnotized patient falls varies all the way from complete lethargy to catalepsy on the one hand, and somnambulism on the other. The condition called somnambulism is that to which the principle interest, from a psychological point of view, attaches. The patient is, to all appearances, awake and normal. He is really, however, in a condition which is called one of high suggestibility. It involves several very interesting features. First, his memory is now gone for the events of his normal waking life, which it still holds, however, for succe ive periods of the hypnotic condition. He is further found to have no memory, after he returns to his normal consciousne , of the events which he experienced while in the hypnotic condition. Again, his senses are enormously acute while in the hypnotic sleep. He can hear, see, feel, ., stimulations which escape our ordinary exercise of these senses altogether; and, finally, he takes all suggestions which come to him from the hypnotizer for realities, and acts implicitly upon them. This last fact is the most remarkable of all; and it gives a means of experimenting directly with the patient when in this condition, since the hypnotizer can arrange beforehand the suggestions which he wishes to give, and have them bear upon certain definite psychological questions. Finally, among the bearings which this fact of Hypochondriacally, adv . In an hypochondriacal manner.