Chapter V: Part I: The Psychological Basis of Psychotherapy (3)

Certainly we cannot settle it by mere statistics. The norm never means merely a majority. Even if the overwhelmingly larger part of mankind suffered from phthisis, the few who were free from it would be recognized as well and all the others would be considered ill. In mental life still more, no one ought to propose that the exceptional function is the symptom of disease. The few persons who never had a dream in their lives differ much in their mental experience from the large majority and yet their peculiarity is certainly not a symptom which needs curative treatment. The only real test of health is the serviceableness to the needs of life. We have an unhealthy state of the personality before us wherever the equilibrium of the human functions is disturbed in a way which diminishes the chances of existence, and the seriousness of the ailment depends upon the degree of this diminishing power. Seen from a strictly psychological point of view, we must expect thus a broad borderland region between the entirely normal well-balanced mental life and that unbalanced disorder of functions which really interferes with the chance for self-protection and effectiveness. That the melancholic who declines to take any nourishment, or the paranoiac who misjudges his surroundings, is unable to secure by his own energies the safety of his life cannot be doubted. The balance is completely destroyed and the will and the intellect of the physician and of the nurse must be substituted for his own mental powers, if his life is to be prolonged at all. But the misjudgment and the depression of the insane are only an exaggeration of that which may occur in any man.

There are therefore thousands of steps which lead from the normal error or regret to the destructive disturbance. Everyone knows persons whose pessimistic temperament makes them inclined to an over-frequent depression, or others whose silly disposition brings out constantly those emotional tendencies which the maniac shows in an exaggerated degree. The stupid mind shows those lacks of association and connection which reach their maximum degree in the mind of the idiot. We know from daily life the timid, undecided man who cannot come to a will impulse; the hasty man who rushes towards decisions; the inattentive man who can never focus his consciousness; and the overattentive man who can never dismiss any subject; the indifferent man on whom nothing produces evident impression and feeling; the over-sensitive man who reacts on slight impressions with exaggerated emotion; and yet every one of such and a thousand similar variations, needs only the projection on a larger scale to demonstrate a mental life which is self-destructive. The silly girl and the stupid boy, the man who has the blues and the reckless creature, are certainly worse equipped for the struggles of existence than those who are intellectually and emotionally and volitionally well-balanced. They will take wrong steps in life, they may be unsuccessful, their stupidity may lead them to the poorhouse, their recklessness may lead them to the penitentiary. And yet we do not speak of them as patients because their disproportionate mental features may be sufficiently corrected by other mental states which are perhaps more strongly developed.

Further, inasmuch as human life just in its mental functions is related to its social surroundings, much must depend on the external conditions, whether the disproportion and abnormality has to be treated as pathological. The mind which may find perhaps its way under the most simple rural conditions would be unable to protect life under the complex conditions of a great city. The man who in certain surroundings may appear a crank has to be treated as a patient in a different set of life conditions. Wherever psychotherapeutic work is in question, perhaps nothing is more important than to keep steadily in mind this continuity between normal and abnormal mental features. The mental disturbance must constantly be looked upon as a change of proportions between functions which, as such, belong to every normal life. We have to train and to develop, and thus to reenforce, that which is too weak, and we have to drain off and to suppress and to inhibit that which is too strong.

Yet just this functional view of disease must remind us strongly from the beginning that it would be utterly in vain to draw any demarcation line between psychical disturbances and physical ones. We have seen from the start that from the point of view of physiological psychology, there can be no psychical process without an accompanying physiological process in the brain. Every disturbance in mental actions is thus at the same time a disturbance in the equilibrium of nervous functions. Yet that alone would not exclude the possibility of considering some diseases, for instance, exclusively from the mental side, and we should be justified in doing so if those parts of the brain which are the seat of the mental processes could remain in the diseased state without influence on other parts of the nervous system and of the whole body. In such a case it would indeed be sufficient to consider the psychophysical disturbance from the psychological point of view only, that is, to speak of the disease as a disorder of intellect, of emotion or will, without thinking of changes in the brain cells. But such isolation does not exist in nature. Not only the bodily factors like nutrition and circulation and sexual functions have a thousandfold influence on the psychophysical processes, and these in turn change the vegetative functions of the body, but especially the other parts of the brain and nervous system can be affected in most different ways. If we want to consider whether a certain variation of the personality demands curative treatment, we certainly cannot confine ourselves to the mental variations. They are after all only parts of the whole group of changes in the organism and are thus symptoms of a disease which has to be studied in its totality. The mental symptoms alone may be relatively slight variations, which in themselves might be sufficiently balanced not to disturb the equilibrium of life, and yet they may be symptoms of a brain disturbance which as a whole must interfere with the safety of life. On the other hand, mental life may appear like a chaos and yet the disturbance may be the symptom of merely a slight brain affection and the treatment of the mental symptoms in their apparent severity would be a useless effort. The mental disturbance, for instance, of the intoxicated or the hashish smoker, even the delirium of the feverish, does not suggest a fight against the mental symptoms during the attack.

On the whole, there is a far-reaching independence between the apparent mental variations and the seriousness of the brain affection. Light hysteric states may produce a strong absenting of the mind while severe epileptic conditions of the brain may be accompanied by very slight mental changes. Every neurasthenic state may play havoc with mental life, while grave brain destructions may only shade slightly the character or the intellect. To deal with the mental changes as if they belonged to a sphere by itself, to the soul which is well or ill through its own independent alterations without steadily relating the changes to the total organism, leads therefore necessarily to failure. The mind reflects only symptoms of the disease; the disease itself belongs always to the organism. Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the belief that the removal of mental symptoms is a cure of disease.

Certainly the psychophysical symptoms may often stand in the foreground of the disease, and in that case it may be left to the special needs whether we deal with them as psychical or as physical changes. Even the patient may be made to see them in one or the other way in accordance with his special needs. To tell him that his brain cells are in disorder and that they can be cured will be the right thing for him who takes only the introspective view of his suffering and is in despair because his own will seems powerless to overcome those mental changes. For the next patient, the opposite may be wiser. The belief that his brain is ill may have induced him to give up effort of the will instead of helping along by steady self-suggestion. He will be helped more if he understands that his mind is working wrongly. But the full truth is that both mind and body are in disorder; the function of the disturbed brain cells accompanies the ineffective will, and to reenforce the will means to bring into equilibrium again the disturbed brain cells. For the psychotherapist the temptation of giving the attention to the mental symptoms only is strong. The more firmly the physician sticks to the standpoint of psychophysiology, the better he will see ailment and cure in their right proportion.

This demand for the consideration of the whole personality, mind and body, ought not to be influenced by the popular separation between organic and functional diseases. If we call organic diseases of the mind those in which the mental disturbance is the accompaniment of a brain disturbance, and functional those in which no brain disturbance exists, we leave entirely the ground of modern psychology. As soon as we believe that the mind can be disturbed without a change in the functions of the brain, we give away all that which has brought scientific order into the study of psychological existence. Every mental disturbance corresponds to a disorder in the brain's functions. But there cannot be a change in the functions of the brain without a change in its structure. Thus we must claim that all those so-called functional disturbances like neurasthenia and hysteria, fixed ideas and obsessions, phobias and dissociations of the personality, as well as the typical insane states of the maniac or paranoiac have their basis in a pathological change of the anatomical structure of the brain. This postulate cannot be influenced by the fact that the microscope has been unable to detect the character of most of these changes.

Of course all this does not exclude its being perfectly justifiable to separate those diseases for which a definite destruction of the brain parts can be detected, as in paralysis of the brain, from those where that is impossible. We may also expect that those disturbances in the brain which we cannot as yet make visible, may allow more easily an organic repair and thus a restoration to the normal functions. Just as a disjointed arm may be brought to function quickly again, a broken arm slowly, an amputated arm never, each brain cell too may suffer lesions which are reparable in different degrees. But it is evident that it remains then an entirely empirical question whether the invisible damage allows repair or not. We have no right to say that where the destruction cannot be seen under the microscope there is no organic change and the disturbance is therefore only a psychical one and can be removed by mental means. All changes are physical and experience has to decide whether they are accessible to psychological influences or not. States like epilepsy may not allow any recognition of definite brain destruction and are yet on the whole inaccessible to mental influence, while many a brain disturbance with visible alterations, resulting perhaps from anaemia or hyperaemia, may be caused to disappear. If on the other hand we say that we can cure with psychotherapeutic means only the functional brain diseases and define as functional simply those diseases which can be cured by such means, we move, of course, in the most obvious circle and yet just that is the too frequent fate of the discussions in certain quarters.

Every psychical disturbance is organic inasmuch as it is based on a molecular change which deranges the function. Some of these changes are beyond restitution; some can be brought back to a well-working structure by strictly physical agencies like drugs or electricity; others can be repaired by physiological stimuli which reach directly the higher brain cells through the sense organs and which we call psychical under one aspect, but which certainly remain physiological influences from another aspect. And these psychophysiological influences of the spoken words or similar agencies are thus indeed for therapeutic effect entirely cooerdinated with the douche and the bath and the electric current and the opiate. It is a stimulation of certain brain cells, an inhibition of certain others: a subtle apparatus which must be handled with careful calculation of its microscopical causes and effects. That these words from an entirely different point of view may mean a moral appeal and have ethical value, point to moral and religious ideas and reenforce the spiritual personality, lies entirely outside of the psychotherapeutic calculation. As long as the curing of the patient is the aim, the faith in God is not more valuable than the faith in the physician and the moral appeal of no higher order than the influence through the galvanic current. They come in question only as means to an end and they are valuable only in so far as they reach the end. That they can be related to an entirely different series of purposes, to the system of our moral ideas, ought not to withdraw the attention of the psychotherapist from his only aim, to cure the patient. The highest moral appeal may be even a most unfit method of treatment and the religious emotion may just as well do harm as good from the point of view of the physician. Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the usual confusion of standpoints.

V

SUGGESTION AND HYPNOTISM

Psychotherapy has now become for us the effort to repair the disturbed equilibrium of human functions by influencing the mental life. It is acknowledged on all sides that the most powerful of these influences is that of suggestion. This is an influence which is most easily misunderstood and which has most often become the starting point for misleading theories. Before we enter into the study of the practical effects of suggestion and the psychotherapeutic results, we must examine this tool in the hand of the psychotherapist from a purely psychological viewpoint. The patient may perhaps sometimes profit from suggestion the more, the less he understands about its nature, but the physician will always secure the better results, the more clearly he apprehends the working of this subtle tool. Of course, that does not mean that any psychology is able to explain the process of suggestion to a point where all difficulties are removed, but at least the mysteries can be removed and the effects can be linked with other well-known processes.

Let us be clear from the start that suggestion is certainly nothing abnormal and exceptional, nothing which leads us away from our ordinary life, nothing which brings us nearer to the great riddles of the universe. There is no human life into which suggestion does not enter in a hundred forms. Family life and education, law and business, public life and politics, art and religion are carried by suggestion. A suggestion is, we might say at first, an idea which has a power in our mind to suppress the opposite idea. A suggestion is an idea which in itself is not different from other ideas, but the way in which it takes possession of the mind reduces the chances of any opposite ideas; it inhibits them. It is indeed the best result of any successful education, that the teachings have taken hold of the mind of the young in such a way that all the opposite tendencies and impulses and wishes do not come to development. The well-educated person does not need to participate in a struggle between good and bad motives, for that which has been impressed upon his mind does not allow the other side to come up at all. Our life would be crowded with inner conflicts if education had not secured for us from the start preponderance for the suggestions of our educators.

The love of family and friends, of our country and our party are in the same way such suggestions. We may hear arguments for the other side, arguments which easily convince the man of the other party, but they do not appeal to us: they are emasculated before they enter our minds; they have no chance to overcome the resistance because suggestions stand in their way. No argument will overwhelm the suggestion which religion has settled in our inner life, and from this strongest suggestion which can stand against any temptation of life small psychological steps lead down to the little bits of suggestion with which our daily chance life is over-flooded. Every advertisement in the newspaper, every display in the shop-window, every warm intonation in the voice of our neighbor has its suggestive power, that is, it brings its content in such a way to our minds that the desire to do the opposite is weakened. We do buy the object that we do not need, and we do follow the advice which we ought to have reconsidered. And what would remain of art if it had not this power of suggestion by which it comes to us and wins the victory over every opposing idea? We believe the painter and we believe the novelist, if their technique is good. We do not remember that the inventions of their genius are contrary to our life experience; we feel sympathy with the hero and do not care in the least that he has no real life. The suggestion of art has inhibited in us every contrary idea.

Such daily experience shows us that suggestive power may belong to different men in different degree. There are lawyers whose arguments and whose presentation open our mind, it seems, to any suggestion: while others leave us indifferent; we understand their idea, we follow their thoughts, and yet we remain accessible to opposite influences. There are teachers whose authority gives to every word such an impressiveness and dignity that every opposite thought disappears, while others throw out words which are forgotten. On the other hand, the readiness to accept suggestions is evidently also quite different with different individuals. From the most credulous to the stubborn, we have every degree of suggestibility, the one impressed by the suggestive power of any idea which is brought to his mind, the other always inclined to distrust and to look over to the opposite argument. Such a stubborn mind is indeed not only without inclination for suggestions, but it may develop even a negative suggestibility; whatever it receives awakens an instinctive impulse towards the opposite. Moreover we are all in different degrees suggestible at different times and under various conditions. Emotions reenforce our readiness to accept suggestions. Hope and fear, love and jealousy give to the impression and the idea a power to overwhelm the opposite idea, which otherwise might have influenced our deliberation. Fatigue and intoxicants increase suggestibility very strongly. To look out on a wider perspective, we may add at once that an artificial increase of suggestibility is all which constitutes the state of hypnotism.

At first, however, we want to understand the ordinary process of suggestion in that normal form in which it enters into every hour of our life and into every relation of our social intercourse. But if we begin to examine the structure of the process, we can no longer be satisfied with the vague reference to ideas and their opposites. What does it mean after all if we speak of opposite ideas? Can we not entertain any ideas peacefully together in our consciousness? From a logical standpoint, ideas may contradict each other, but that refers to their meaning. As mere bits of psychological experience, I may have any ideas together in my consciousness. I can think summer and winter or day and night or right and left or black and white or love and hate in one embracing thought. As mere mental stuff, the one idea does not interfere with the other. On the other hand, this is evident: I cannot will to turn to the right and to turn to the left at the same time. There may be a wrangling between those two impulses, but as soon as my will stands for the one, the other is really excluded. Any action which I am starting to do thus crowds out the impulse to the opposed action.

In the sphere of psychological facts, we have here indeed the only relation between two happenings which necessarily involves an opposition. We could never understand why one brain cell might not work together with any other brain cell, but we do understand that nature must provide for an apparatus by which the impulse to one action makes the impulse to the opposite action ineffective. There is no action which has not its definite opposite. The carrying out of any impulse involves the suppression of the contrary impulse, and the impulse not to do an action involves the suppression of the impulse to do it. When we spoke of the relations of mind and brain, we mentioned that such a corelation of mental centers indeed exists. Physiological experiments have demonstrated that the activity of those centers which stimulate a certain action reduce the excitability of those brain parts which awaken the antagonistic action. As far as the world of actions is concerned, the mechanism of the process of suggestion thus seems not inaccessible to a physiological understanding.

Various ideas of movements to be carried out are struggling for control in the cortex of the brain. That is the normal status which precedes any decision. The channels of motor discharge are open for both possibilities; we may turn to the right or to the left. Then the play of associations begins. A larger and larger circle of ideas surrounds the idea of the one and of the other goal. Those ideas awaken emotions. On the one side may call our duty and on the other side our pleasure. Larger and larger parts of the central content of our consciousness, of our own personality, become involved; our principles and maxims, our memories, our hopes and fears, enter into the battle until deeper strata of the idea of ourselves enter into a firm association with the one side, reenforcing, perhaps, the idea of the goal at the right. This opens wide the channels of discharge for the movement to the right and inhibits thereby the excitability of the center which leads to the opposite action. The channel of discharge to the movement towards the left becomes closed, the idea of that movement fades away and becomes inhibited: we are moving towards the right. The outcome was the product of our total personality.

But this result would have been different, if from the start the channels of discharge had not been equally open for both possible movements, and if thus the relative resistance to the impulse had not been equal on both sides. If, for instance, we had gone from the given point frequently to the left, as a result of the habit and training, the impulse to the left would have found less nervous resistance. The channels would have become widened by the repetition and the opposite channels would have been somewhat closed by the lack of use. Or if instead of such previous habit, we should see at the decisive moment others turning to the left, the impression would have become the starting point for a reaction of mere instinctive imitation. While we might not have followed that imitative impulse at once, yet the channels would have been widened, the discharge in the direction would have been prepared by it, the resistance would have been lowered and the chances for the opposite movement would have been decreased. Those people who moved to the left gave us by their action the same kind of an impulse which they would have furnished if they had begged us with words, or if they had ordered us to follow them with authoritative firmness. In each of these cases, the influence would have amounted to a suggestion. Whether we watched the movements of other people or whether their words made an impression on us, in either case the way became prepared for a certain line of action and therefore the way for the opposite action became blocked. The final outcome was thus no longer an entirely free play of motor ideas, but there was a little inequality in play. The one had from the start a better chance, the other was from the start laboring under difficulties. The suggestion of actions is thus nothing but making use of the antagonistic character in the nervous paths which start from the motor centers. That all such phrases as the opening and the closing, the widening and blocking, of channels of discharge are only metaphors hardly needs special emphasis. Instead of such comparisons, we ought rather to think of chemical processes which offer various degrees of resistance to the propagation of the nervous excitement.

We see from here the direction in which many psychotherapeutic efforts must lie, efforts which are entirely within the limits of the daily normal experience, and belong to the medical practice of every physician, yes, to the helpful influence of every man in practical life. The intemperate man may suffer from his inability to resist his desire for whiskey. The idea of his visit to the saloon finds the channels of discharge open. We argue with him, we tempt him by attractions which lead to other ways, we suggest to him that he spend those evening hours perhaps with friends or with books for which we awaken his interest; we do it as impressively as we can, we appeal to his friendly feeling for us; and if again the hour comes in which the desire for the artificial stimulation sets in with a motor impulse towards the bottle, the channels for discharge have now been blocked. The idea of the opposite action arises, it associates itself with the emotions which we stirred up in his mind, it associates itself with the respect for the adviser, and thus new clusters of thought reenforce that idea of action which we suggested, and this opposite line of action now finds a minimum resistance because our appeal has opened beforehand the gate. The desire for the book works itself out into action while the desire for the cup finds increased resistance.

Just this is the kind of suggestion with which we correct faulty action everywhere in our social circle; and yet small steps lead on from here to the case where perhaps the desire for alcohol has reached that pathological intensity in which the equilibrium is entirely disturbed and cannot be repaired without suggestions of a much more powerful character, given in a state of artificially increased suggestibility--in hypnotism. The principle of opening certain channels of discharge for the purpose of closing the opposite channels remains in the extreme case the same as in the more ordinary cases. The impulse to drink is a positive one, but the principle is not different where the impulse is negative. A friend who comes from the quiet country may feel unable to pass the busy square of the city. The fear of an accident holds back his steps, he cannot give the impulse to walk through the crowded rush of vehicles. Now either by words of advice, by persuasion or by showing the way, we may apply our suggestion, we open the channels of discharge for the necessary movements and thus decrease the excitability of those centers in which nervous fear was playing. And again small steps lead from here to the case of the psychasthenic sufferer whose phobia does not allow him to cross any square and where reenforced suggestion has to break open the ways for the walking movement when the square is reached.

Thus we are not far from a causal understanding of suggestive influences wherever actions are concerned, where movements are to be reenforced or to be suppressed and where antagonism of the motor paths is involved. But that does not seem to lead us nearer to the much larger group of states in which the whole suggestive process concerns apparently the interplay of ideas alone, where not actions but impressions are controlled by suggestion, where not impulses but thoughts are strengthened or inhibited. Here lies the real psychophysical problem which has been by far too much neglected in scientific psychology and has almost been hidden and made to disappear in the wonderful accounts of the hypnotists. But all those mysterious stories as to the achievements of suggestion cannot help so long as we do not understand the working of the process, and we shall have the better chance to understand it the more we keep away from the uncanny and mysterious results which refer to the most complex conditions, and rather seek to analyze the state in its simplest forms and compare it with other simple mental processes. The psychology of suggestion has suffered too much by the fascination which its most complex forms exert on a trivial curiosity.

Yet the problem of suggestion in the field of ideas stands after all not isolated. Instead of connecting it with the weird reports of mystic influence from man to man, let us rather link it with the simple experience of attention. There is no pulse-beat of our life in which attention does not play its little role. But does not attention share with suggestion the characteristic feature that some contents of consciousness are reenforced and others are suppressed? This negative, this suppressing character of attention is not a chance by-product, it is most essential. There is no attention without it. If I am studying, I do not hear the conversation around me, and if I listen to the conversation, my studies in hand become inhibited. If I enjoy the play on the stage and give to it my full attention, my memories of the day's work are suppressed; if I think of the happenings of the day, I am not attentive to the play and hardly notice what is going on. The inhibited impression may often disappear entirely. While I am reading I am not at all aware of the tactual and muscular sensations in my legs, and if I am completely absorbed by my book, I may not even notice that the bell rings. In short, we have here as the most characteristic relation, just as in suggestion, the fact that one mental state becomes vivid, and that others are losing ground, become less vivid, are inhibited and perhaps disappear entirely.

Of course, to point to the similarity between suggestion and attention is not a real explanation. It may be answered that attention simply offers the same difficulties once more. How can we explain in the attention process the fact that one idea, the one attended to, becomes vivid and that others evaporate? The difficulty evidently cannot be removed by simply saying that only one sensorial process can be developed in the brain at one time. The popular descriptions of attention easily make it appear as if such were the solution of the problem. If one sensorial brain part is intensely engaged, the remainder of the brain is condemned to a kind of inactivity. Yet such a dogma is hardly better than the old-fashioned one that the soul can have only one idea at a time. We know too well now that the psychophysical system is an extremely complex equilibrium of millions of elements. Thus every change must be explained with reference to this complex manifold. Above all, the facts simply contradict such an over-simple explanation, inasmuch as it is not at all true that only one content of consciousness can become vivid. Our attention does not focus upon one point at all but may illuminate a large field and thus give vividness to various complex groups. If I am thinking about a scientific problem, an abundance of reminiscences of previous reading and imaginative ideas of possible solutions, associative thoughts and conclusions are with equal vividness before my mind and the forthcoming thought may be influenced by this total combination. I have no right whatever to say that the idea of a certain solution excludes there in my mind the consideration of the books which I have read and of the discussions which I have heard. Emotions may be superadded. In short, a world of mental states may be held together by one act of attention. And new and ever new thoughts are shooting in, and all still find place there in the field attended to, while on the other hand my slight headache is inhibited and an appointment is forgotten. At a gay banquet, my attention may be given to the whole hall with all its color effects and its flowers, and to all that the table offers and to the music from the orchestra and to the jokes of my neighbors. It is not true that any one of those parts suppresses the vividness of the others, they seem rather to maintain and to help one another; and yet in the next moment, my neighbor may bring me news which absorbs my mind entirely and leaves no room for the flowers and the music and the meal. How far can psychology do justice to these characteristics of attention?

There seems to be but one way. The attended-to idea does not exclude every other idea, but it does exclude the opposite idea, and opposite to each other is here again that pair of ideas which lead to opposite actions, to opposite psychophysical attitudes. We must remember here the psychomotor character of our brain processes which we so fully discussed. We recognized the fundamental truth that there is no sensorial state which is not at the same time the starting-point for motor reaction. We recognized that the brain is by its whole psychological development a great switchboard which transfers incoming currents into outgoing ones and that its biological meaning lies in the fact that it is the center piece of an arc which leads from the sense organs to the muscles. We cannot conceive of those relations as complex enough; we know, of course, that millions of nerve fibers lead from the periphery to the highest psychophysical apparatus in the cortex of the brain and that millions of fibers bring about the interrelation between these central stations, but we must never forget that millions of fibers also represent the outgoing paths and that they too lead down to lower central motor instruments which are again in numberless corelations. Any impression is thus a starting point for attitudes and reactions and it is an empty abstraction to consider it otherwise. An idea is never, psychophysically considered, the end of the process, it is always also a beginning. No external action may follow, but the mental impulse to such is nevertheless starting in the highest center.

If we look at the landscape, every single spot of color, reaching a nerve fiber in our eye and finally a sensory cell in our brain, is there the starting point for an impulse to make an eye movement in the direction of the seen point. The eye may remain entirely quiet as the impulse to move to the right and to the left, to move up and to move down, may be equally strong, but those thousands of impulses work in the motor paths and only their equilibrium results in the suppression of the outer movement. With such motor scheme, we begin to understand the selective process in attention. An impression may be accompanied by other stimuli and associations, by thoughts and ideas, and thousands of sensory excitements may thus arise in the cortex, but only those have a chance for full vividness of development which cooeperate in the motor action already started. Those impressions which would lead to the opposite actions have no chance because their motor paths are blocked and their own full development is dependent upon their possibility of expression. To close the path means to inhibit the idea which demands such action. We can attend to a hundred thoughts together, if they all lead to the same attitude and deed. We can look at the opera, can see every singer and every singer's gown, can listen to every word, can have the whole plot in mind, can hear the thousands of tones which come from the orchestra; and yet combine all that in one act of attention, because it all belongs to the same setting of our reactive apparatus. Whatever the one wants is wanted by the others. But if at the same time our neighbor speaks to us, we do not notice it; his words work as a stimulus which demands an entirely different motor setting as answer. Therefore the words remain unvivid and unnoticed.

To attend means therefore to bring about a motor setting by which the object of attention finds open channels for discharge in action. Which particular action is needed in the state of attention cannot be doubtful. Attention demands those motor responses and those inner steps by which the object of attention shows itself more fully and more clearly. When we give attention to the picture we want to see more details, when we give attention to the problem we want to recognize more of the factors involved, when we give attention to the banquet we want to grasp more of the pleasurable features. This aim of attention involves that, as part of such reactions, the sense organs become adjusted; we fixate the eyeball, we listen, and in consequence the object itself becomes clearer, and through the easy passage into the motor channels the whole impression becomes vivid. At the same time, all those associations must be reenforced and become vivid too which lead to the same action. On the other hand, the opening of the one passageway closes the path to the opposite action and inhibits the impressions which would interfere with our interest. Every act of attention becomes, therefore, a complex distribution in the reenforcement and inhibition of mental states.

Now let us come back to suggestion. It shares, we said, with attention, the power to reenforce and to inhibit. But if we examine what is involved in the suggestion of an idea, we find surely more than a mere turning of the attention towards one idea and turning the attention away from another idea. That which characterizes and constitutes suggestion is a belief in the idea, an acceptance of the idea as real and the dismissal of the opposite idea as unreal. Yes, we may say directly that it is meaningless to speak of suggesting an idea; we suggest either an action or, if no action is concerned, we suggest belief in an idea. If I suggest to the fearful man at twilight that the willow-tree trunk by the wayside is a man with a gun, I do not turn his attention to an abstract idea of a robber nor do I simply awaken the visual impression of one, but I make him believe that such an idea is there realized, that he really sees the person. If I suggest to him that he hears distant bells ringing or that he feels a slight headache, he may not be suggestible enough to accept it, but if he accepts it he is not simply attending to the idea which I propose but he is convinced of its real existence. The same holds true with the negative; if I suggest to him that the slight headache of which he complained has disappeared or that the smell which he noticed has stopped, I do not simply invite him to think of the absence of such sensations. It becomes for him a suggestion only if he becomes convinced that these disturbances have now become unreal. The same holds true for all those suggestions of ideas which belong to our practical life, the suggestions which art imprints on our minds, or which politics and religion impart. As long as we are under the suggestion of the novelist, we really believe in the existence of the heroine; we really believe in the validity of the political party principle; it is not an argument to which we simply give our attention, it becomes a suggestion only when the belief in its objective existence controls our minds. We may say in general that suggestions which are not suggestions of actions are without exception suggestions of belief. Actions and beliefs are the only possible material of any suggestion.

Yet what else is a belief than a preparation for action? I may think of an object without preparing myself for any particular line of behavior. Here in the room I may think of rain or sunshine on the street as a mere idea, but to know that it now really rains or shines means something entirely different. It means a completely new setting in my present attitude, a setting by which I am prepared to act along the one or the other line, to take an umbrella or to take a straw hat, when I am to leave the house. I may think of the door of this room as locked or unlocked without transcending the mere sphere of imagination, but to believe that it is the one or the other means a new setting in my motor adjustments. If it is locked I know that I cannot leave the room without a key. Every belief means the preparation for a definite line of action and a new motor adjustment in the whole system of motor paths, an adjustment by which my actions in future will be switched off at once into particular paths. And there is theoretically no difference whether my belief refers to the proposition that the door is locked or that a God exists in Heaven.

But if every belief is such a new motor setting, then we are evidently brought back to the mechanism which was essential for every suggestion of action on the one side and for every process of attention on the other side, namely, the mechanism of antagonistic movements. To prepare ourselves for one line of action means to close beforehand the channels of discharge for the opposite. The suggestible mind sees the man with a gun on the wayside because he is preparing himself in his expectation for the appropriate action; he is ready for the fight or ready to run away, and every line of the tree trunk is apperceived with reference to this motor setting. The smell, on the other hand, has disappeared under the influence of the suggestion because a new motor adjustment has set in, in which he is prepared to act as if there were no smell.

The difference between suggestion and attention lies thus only in this: the motor response in attention aims towards a fuller clearness of the idea, for instance, by fixating, listening, observing, searching; while the motor response in suggestion aims towards the practical action in which the object of the idea is accepted as real. In attention, we change the object in making it clearer; in suggestion, we change ourselves in adapting ourselves to the new situation in which we believe. If you consider attention as a psychophysical process open to physiological explanation, you have surely no reason to seek anything mysterious in the process of suggestion; and no new principle is involved, if we come from the effect of the smallest suggestive hint to the complex and powerful suggestions which overwhelm the whole personality.

The two great types of suggestion, the suggestion of actions and the suggestion of ideas, have now come nearer together since we have seen that the suggestion of ideas is really a suggestion of the practical acceptance of ideas, and that means, of a preparation towards a certain line of action. In the one case I suggest the idea of a certain action and this motor idea leads to the action itself, and in the other case I suggest a certain preparatory setting for action and that will lead to the appropriate action whenever the time for action comes. Every suggestion is thus ultimately a suggestion of activity. The most effective suggestion for an action results, of course, if both methods are combined, that is, if we suggest not only the will to perform the action, but at the same time the belief that the end of the action will be real. Suggestion reaches us usually from without. Yet there is again no new principle involved, when the new motor setting results from one's own associations and emotions. Then we speak of auto-suggestion. It is the same difference which exists between the attention called forth through an outer impression and the attention directed by our own will. Loud noise demands our attention, and even a whispered word may awaken associations which stir up the attention. In both cases the channels for adjustment become opened without our intention. But if we are expecting something of importance, if we start to watch a certain development and to find something which we seek, we open the channels by our own effort beforehand and produce our own settings thus through a voluntary attention. In this way suggestion too may start from without,--by a spoken word, by a movement, by a hint; or may start within us and may give us our caprices and our prejudices.

We must not neglect one other feature of the suggestion. Not every proposition to action or to belief can be called a suggestion. Essential too remains the other side of it, the overcoming of the resistance. A mere request, "Please hand me the book on the table," or a mere communication, "It rains," may produce and will produce the fit motor response, the movement towards handing over the book or opening of the umbrella, and yet there may be no suggestive element involved. We have a right to speak of suggestion only if a resistance is to be broken down, that is, if the antagonistic impulse, or the motor setting for the antagonistic action is relatively strong. If I say to the boy, "Hand me the book," when he was anxious to hide the book from my eyes and thus had the wish not to hand it to me and the tone of my request overwhelmed his own intention, then to be sure suggestion is at work. The stronger the resistance, the greater the degree of suggestive power which is needed to overcome the motor setting. If I say to the normal man, "It rains," while he sees the blue sky and the dry street, his impression will be stronger than my suggestion; but if he is suggestible and I tell him that it will rain, he may accept it and take an umbrella on his walk, even if no indication makes a change of weather probable. The present impression of the dry street was strong enough to resist the suggestion, the imaginative idea of that which is to be expected in the next hour was too weak, and was overwhelmed by the suggestion of the weather prophecy.

It is clear that the whole suggestive effect, being one of a new motor setting, depends thus entirely on the equilibrium of the personality which receives the suggestion. Every element which reaches the mind through sense organs or through associations must have influence in helping the one or the other side, that is, in opening the channels of action in the suggested direction or in the antagonistic one. The results appear surprising only if we forget how endlessly complex this psychomotor apparatus really is. If we disregard this complexity we may easily have the feeling that one person has an unexplainable influence over another, as if the will of the one could control in a mysterious way the will of the other. But as soon as we see that every action is the result of the cooeperation of hundreds of thousands of psychomotor impulses which are in definite relation to antagonistic energies, and that the result depends upon the struggling and balancing of this most complex apparatus, then we understand more easily how outer influences may help the one or the other side to preponderance: as soon as the balance turns to the one side, a completely new adjustment must set in. And we understand especially that there is nowhere a sharp demarcation line between receiving communications and receiving suggestions. By small steps suggestion shades over into the ordinary exchange of ideas, propositions, and impressions, just as attention shades over into a neutral perception.

To be suggestible means thus to be provided with a psychophysical apparatus in which new propositions for actions close easily the channels for antagonistic activity. Such an apparatus carries with it the disadvantage that the personality may too easily be guided contrary to his own knowledge and experience. He will be carried away by every new proposition and will accept beliefs which his own thoughts ought to reject. On the other hand, it has the advantage that he will be open to new ideas, be ready to follow good examples, never stubbornly close his mind to the unaccustomed and the uncomfortable. It is easy to determine the degree of suggestibility. Take this case. I draw on the blackboard of a classroom two circles of an equal size, and write in the one the number fourteen and in the other the number eighty-nine, and ask the children which is the larger circle. The suggestible ones will believe that the circle with the higher number in it is really larger than the other, the unsuggestible children will follow the advice of their senses and call both equal, and there may be a few children with negative suggestibility who would call the circle with the higher number the smaller circle. What happened to the suggestible ones was that the higher number brought about a motor attitude which faced that whole complex as being more imposing and this new motor setting was with them strong enough to overcome the motor adjustment which the circles alone produced. Such experiments of the psychological laboratory can be varied a thousandfold, and it might not be unwise to introduce them into many practical fields. Everybody knows for instance how much may depend upon the suggestibility of the witness in court. The suggestible witness believes himself to have seen and heard what the lawyer suggests. The memory picture which such a witness has in mind offers, of course, much less resistance to the opposite action and attitude and belief than the immediate impression. If I show the witness a colored picture of a room and close the book and ask him whether there were three or four chairs in the picture and whether the curtain was green or red, the suggestible man will decide for one or the other proposition, even if there were only two chairs and a blue curtain. The perception would have resisted the suggestion, the fading memory image cannot resist it. Thus suggestibility is really a practical factor in every walk of life. And it is in the highest interests of psychotherapy that this intimate connection between suggestion and ordinary talk and intercourse, between suggestion and ordinary choice of motives, between suggestion and attention be steadily kept in view and that suggestion is not transformed into a kind of mysterious agency.