Hypnotic Suggestion—Its Rôle in Psychoneurotic and Psychosomatic Disorders

In the last few years there has been a renewed interest in hypnosis. Unfortunately one can only view this renaissance with mixed feelings. A number of thoughtful clinical, experimental, and theoretical studies have appeared, but the bulk of the writing has either been sensational or uncritical. It is, alas, so easy for a person interested in hypnosis to become at first fascinated and then hypnotized by his labors. There is little that is new in Dr. Van Pelt's book. There is much, however, with which one can take issue in his historical and theoretical sections. It is surely not true that Freud gave up hypnotism "when he discovered that he could not deeply hypnotize all his patients." This is merely emphasizing one of Freud's less important considerations. There are other and much more important reasons for this turning away from cathartic hypnotherapy, and Freud wrote repeatedly about this. Since the book is concerned with therapy and a considerable portion of it is devoted to this topic, this reviewer would like to limit his discussion to this aspect. Dr. Van Pelt presents twelve patients, all of whom were cured by hypnotherapy; there were no failures. It is interesting to note that nine of the twelve patients were cured in six sessions, and one could easily speculate on the compliance of the patients in order to make success not only so thorough but also so uniform. Treatment, choosing one case at random, eventually led to something like this "It was explained to the patient in hypnosis that now he knew the cause of his trouble, things would be different. He was no longer a young man who wanted to specialize. He could make a comfortable living as a general practitioner if he pulled himself together. Many people had stood by him all these years and helped him, they would help him more if he made the effort. He no longer regarded his wife as a 'ball and chain.' She had stood by him loyally all these years. He was proud of his son-he did not want him to be ashamed of his father . . . etc." Despite the fact that the patient supposedly knew "the cause of his trouble" he had to be told all this and more. After he had thus been successfully brain-washed, he was sent on his way. It seems to this writer that such suggestions are not only potentially harmful to the patient, but also represent a resurgence of an antihumanistic, personality-suppressive attitude that cannot be too much deplored in any form of treatment and above all in psychotherapy. One reviewer recently pointed out that it was one of Freud's greatest contributions to have demanded that one should listen attentively to one's patients. There is much that we have to learn about hypnosis. However, there is much that we already do know, as is so well exemplified by the studies of Brenman and Gill; there is an unsurpassable gulf between their studies and the one reported here. This book increases this writer's conviction about