Chapter X: Hypnotism, Suggestion, and Crime

In recent years a quasi-unconscious state, induced by suggestion and called the hypnotic trance, has come to occupy a very important place in the popular mind. Hypnotism, as the general consideration of this state is known, has attracted not a little attention, as well from physicians as from those interested in psychology. The hypnotic (Greek, [Greek text], sleep) trance is a condition in which voluntary brain activity is almost completely in abeyance, though the mind is able passively to receive many impressions from the external world. There are very curious limitations in the effect of the hypnotic state upon the various senses. While visual sensations, and, as a rule also, impressions from the tactile sense, lose their significance, or are translated according to the will of the person active in producing the hypnotic state, or of some person present making suggestions, auditory sensations are quite normally perceived. The patient has all the appearance of being asleep, though motions, and even locomotion, are often possible, and are performed as if the patient were walking in sleep.

The hypnotic state is a partial sleep, then, of the motor side of the nervous system and of portions of the sensory nervous system. Certain of the higher intellectual powers, however, are entirely awake, and capable of being impressed through the hearing, and thus hypnotic suggestion has a place. For a time, under the influence of Charcot and his disciples, there was a very generally accepted opinion that the hypnotic trance was a pathological condition, somewhat allied to the cataleptic phase of major hysteria. It is well known that persons suffering from severe attacks of hysteria {130} may, while apparently unconscious, yet receive suggestions through the hearing. On the other hand, the production of cataleptic and other strained attitudes, in the maintenance of which fatigue seems to play no part, is possible by means of hypnotic suggestion in susceptible individuals.

Further investigation, however, seems to have shown that the hypnotic state is rather to be considered as a quasi-physiological condition, somewhat related to sleep, all the mystery of which is not as yet understood. This is not surprising when we realise that such a normal and absolutely physiological condition as healthy sleep is yet without a satisfactory explanation on the part of physiologists. Hypnotism is recognised now as having a certain limited power for good, though the benefit derived from it is apt to be temporary, and the operator loses his power after a time,--not so much failing to produce the hypnotic condition, as failing to have his suggestions favourably accepted by the subject While the Nancy school of hypnotism insisted that most people were susceptible to the hypnotic trance, it is now generally considered that something less than 40 per centum of ordinary individuals can be brought under its influence.

Much has been said of the dangers of hypnotism. There seems no doubt that very nervous persons are likely to be hurt by repeated recourse to the hypnotic condition. After a time they are likely to live most of their lives in a half-dreamy condition, in which initiative and spontaneous activity becomes more difficult than before. Where persons have been hypnotised by means of the flash of a bright object, or by some other special means, it sometimes happens that accidentally some similar object may send them into hypnotic trance. After a time, too, auto-hypnotism becomes possible, and much of the individual's waking time is occupied with efforts to keep himself from going into the hypnotic trance. These are, however, very extreme cases, likely to occur only in those who are not of strong mentality in the beginning. Unfortunately these are the individuals who are most likely to be made the subjects of repeated and prolonged hypnotic experimentation on the part of unscrupulous charlatans.

For the great majority of those that are susceptible to the {131} hypnotic condition, there is very little danger. We now have on record the experiences of men who have seriously devoted many years to the study of hypnotic phenomena. There is entire agreement among these men that the possible dangers of hypnotism have been exaggerated. Indeed, it may be as well to say at once that most of what has been written with regard to the dangers of hypnotism has come from those who have least practical experience with the condition. Dr. Milne Bramwell, who, for a quarter of a century, has had a very extensive experience with hypnotism in its many phases, in his recent book on hypnotism, deliberately speaks of the "so-called dangers" of hypnotism. He has never seen any evil effects, though he has been practising hypnotism very freely on all kinds of patients for over twenty years.

It is on the experience of such serious, disinterested observers that we must rely for our ultimate conclusions as to hypnotism, rather than on the claims of pseudo-experts who like to magnify their own powers, or on popular magazine articles, or still less the Sunday newspapers, the writers for which are mainly interested in producing a sensation. It seems probable that in the next few years hypnotism will occupy a less prominent place in popular interest than it has in the recent past. Interest in hypnotism runs in cycles, reaching a maximum about once a generation, and we are on the downward swing of the last wave of popular attention to this subject.

A subject that has attracted much attention, whenever hypnotism has been under discussion, has been the possibility of crime being committed under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. The best authorities in hypnotism seem to be agreed that subjects can not be brought by hypnotic influence to perform actions that are directly contrary to their own feeling of right and wrong. The supposed exceptions to this rule are rather newspaper sensations than real compelled crimes. There is no doubt, however, that a tendency to the performance of certain wrong actions, so that the normal disinclination to their performance becomes much less than before, may be cultivated by a series of hypnotic as well as by waking suggestions. Where the individual influenced is {132} already characterised by weakness of will in certain directions, the added weight of the motives furnished by hypnotic suggestion may prove sufficient to turn the scale of responsibility. It is probably because of such influence that a recent case in France has attracted world-wide attention.

In general, however, it may be said that normal individuals can not be brought to the commission of crime by hypnotic suggestion, and the plea of irresponsibility, for this reason, is not worthy of consideration. There are phases of this important problem, however, which require further careful study. Undoubtedly some of the so-called inherited tendencies to the commission of crime are really instances of the influence of auto-suggestion that has kept the possibility of some criminal act constantly before the mind. Some of the cases of hereditary dipsomania are almost surely of this character. Persons whose parents have been the subject of inebriety lose something of their own will power to keep away from intoxicating drink by the reflection that it is hopeless for them to struggle against an inherited tendency.

A series of cases have been reported in which suicide has occurred in successive generations in the same family at about the same time of life. There seems no doubt that suggestion must have great influence in such cases. In one well-authenticated report, mentioned in the chapter on suicides, the members of the family were officers in the German army, and the eldest son, the family representative, committed suicide within the same five years of life, in four successive generations. The last member of the family had refused to marry, because of this doom hanging over the house, and had often referred to the possibility of suicide in his own case. In his early years he seemed to have the idea that he might escape the family fate, but after middle life he settled down irretrievably to the persuasion that he would inevitably go like the others.

Here, in America, a rather striking example of this has recently been the subject of sensational newspaper reports. A notorious gambler, whose career had seen many ups and downs, finally found himself in a condition where, strange as it may seem, legal restriction made it impossible for him to {133} continue his usually lucrative profession. Three members of his immediate family, two brothers and his mother, had committed suicide. To friends he had sometimes spoken of this sad history of family self-murder, but always with a calm rationality which seemed to indicate that he hoped to avoid any such fate. When well on in years, however, with his means of livelihood taken from him, he, too, took the family path out of difficulties and shot himself at the door of the man who had been most instrumental in taking away from him his occupation. It seems not unlikely, from the circumstances of the case, that a double crime, homicide, as well as suicide would have been reported, only for the fortuitous circumstance that the other man was not in at a time when usually he was to be found at his office.

In such cases as these it seems reasonably clear that long-continued familiarity with a given idea produces an auto-suggestion which finally overcomes the natural abhorrence even of suicide. Something can be done for such unfortunates by suggestion in the opposite direction, and by taking care that as far as possible they are not allowed to brood over the fate they consider impending. At times of stress and emotional strain, relatives and friends must be particularly careful in their watch over them. It is never advisable that they should take up such professions as those of broker or politician, or speculator, since the emotional states connected with such occupations are likely to prove too much for their mental equilibrium.

Practically all physicians that have given any attention to the subject are convinced that not a few of the suicides, which are now so alarmingly on the increase in this country, are due to the frequent reading in newspapers of the accounts of suicides. As we have said elsewhere, brooding over the details of these is very likely to lessen the natural abhorrence of self-murder in persons that are predisposed, by melancholic dispositions, to such an act. The publication of cases of suicide can do no possible good, while it undoubtedly does, in this way, work incalculable harm. This is especially true with regard to suicides among young people, that is, individuals under twenty-five years of age. The saddest feature of recent {134} statistics with regard to suicide is that this crime has become proportionately much more frequent among young men and young girls, and even children, than it was two or three decades ago. It has been noted, too, in many cases that a previous suicide in the family seems to have familiarised the young mind with the idea of self-destruction and thus suggested its commission.

On the other hand, among young people especially, it has been noted that there is frequently an imitative element in suicides. Three or four suicides, practically with the same details, will occur, within a few days of each other. Suicides at all ages are especially likely to occur in groups, and are often cited to exemplify the truth of the old axiom that evils never come singly. It is especially among young people, however, that this relationship to previous suicides can be traced, and there is no doubt that it is the unfortunate publicity given to suicide, with the consequent suggestive influence, which constitutes the most important factor in these cases. All the influence that clergymen can exert, then, must be wielded to suppress this, as well as the many other evils which flow from sensational journalism.

JAMES J. WALSH.

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