Alfred A. Barrios, PhD

Copyright © Alfred Barrios.  Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

[The original version of the article is available from Dr. Barrios’ Self-Programmed Control Center (SPCC) website and from The Great Debate website.  See also the NCH article on Dr. Barrios' theory of hypnosis and this article on Pavlov and hypnosis.]

The question of whether man does or does not have free will has been debated down through the centuries by some of the greatest minds but has never been fully answered. There are those, call them idealists, who say that of course we have free will; we can control our own destiny; we can choose between misery and happiness. Then there are the realists who point to all the miserable people in the world and ask did all these people freely choose to be miserable?

Do we really have free will? Do we really have control over our own destiny? Can we change our behaviors at will if we see that they are detrimental to us? Or is everything set in stone, pre-determined? In order to finally answer this question, we must first properly define our terms. Although there are currently many definitions of free will, I believe the most correct one is: Free will is the ability to control our automatic side, our subconscious behavior, by means of the power of sufficiently concentrated thought. And by concentrated thought I mean the ability to block the interference from any negative automatic behavior or thought that would tend to contradict the action or change we wish to empower.

If you stop to think about it, most people’s behavior is of an automatic nature: habits, attitudes and beliefs that have been so deeply programmed in over the years as to be so automatic that they are very hard to change. In this sense then you could say that many people are automatons, governed and slaves to this automatic (subconscious) behavior. [The "subconscious" is to be differentiated from the "unconscious" here. I define the subconscious as behavior that has been so deeply programmed as to occur automatically, below conscious awareness and often beyond conscious control. The unconscious can be defined as engrams or memories beyond immediate conscious recall.]

So from this definition of free will we can see that the answer to the question of whether there is free will or not is that all humans have the POTENTIAL for free will because all humans have the potential to enter this state of concentrated thought and thus have the potential to re-program themselves at will (an ability that differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom). But not everyone has learned how to do this. Consequently, people differ from one another in the amount of free will they have.

However, there is a way of achieving this state of sufficiently concentrated thought and that is by developing a heightened state of belief in the outcome or change you are trying to program in; for I define belief as concentration on a thought to the exclusion of anything that would contradict that thought. Or another way of putting it: a state of heightened belief includes a strong inhibitory set which can suppress the existing negative program you are trying to replace sufficiently so as to keep it from interfering with the re-programming you are attempting.

This is why hypnosis is such a powerful tool for facilitating change since I define hypnosis (as did B.F. Skinner) as a heightened state of belief. This is strongly supported by the evidence showing that hypnotherapy is the most effective form of psychotherapy. I refer the reader to the review of the literature I presented in my article “Hypnotherapy: A Reappraisal” (Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 1970). It was found that the average success rate for hypnotherapy was 93% after an average of 6 sessions; this compared to 72% after an average of 22 sessions for behavior therapy, and 38% after an average of 600 sessions for psychoanalysis.

This is also one of the reasons why religion is so deeply entrenched in the hearts of many since religion offers another way to a heightened state of belief. It also explains why the placebo effect in medicine (both standard and alternative) and psychotherapy plays such a big role in facilitating positive changes in humans since the placebo is based on the power of belief.

Those among you who are adherents of determinism need not feel that this approach to free will contradicts your beliefs – if you define determinism in terms of the lawfulness of nature instead of the opposite of free will as some mistakenly do. What is the opposite of free will is fatalism. If you believe that your life i pre-ordained or pre-destined and that you cannot change it from that, then you are a fatalist and do not believe in free will.

We should also clearly differentiate between the terms “heightened belief” and “beliefs”. When I refer to the power of heightened belief, I am referring to the power of concentrated (unhindered) thought. When I refer to the term “beliefs”, I mean specific attitudes, ideas, ways of seeing things a person might have.

I also feel it is important to differentiate between the concepts of faith and belief. Faith I define as a form of guided or directed belief. And I like to point out that belief alone is often not enough for positive change. If it is directed in a negative direction, it can be harmful and dangerous.

Finally, with regards to how thoughts can directly affect human reactions I refer you to Pavlov’s writings on the power of speech (as well as inner speech which is how Pavlovians refer to thoughts) to affect humans:

Obviously for man speech provides conditioned stimuli which are just as real as any other stimuli… Speech, on account of the whole preceding life of the adult, is connected up with all the internal and external stimuli which can reach the cortex, signaling all of them and replacing all of them, and therefore it can call forth all those reactions of the organism which are normally determined by the actual stimuli themselves.

All articles and quotes referred to above can be found in the “Dr. Barrios Articles” section of my website: www.SPCcenter.com, including my theory of hypnosis. See especially my articles: “Science in Support of Religion: From the Perspective of a Behavioral Scientist” and “Hypnotherapy: A Reappraisal“.

Copyright © Alfred Barrios. Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

[The original version of the article is available from Dr. Barrios’ Self-Programmed Control Center (SPCC) website and from The Great Debate website.]

Émile Coué, Autosuggestion, and Ancient Philosophy

Copyright (c) Donald Robertson, 2010. All rights reserved. 

Strikingly, Coué wrote, ‘Pythagoras and Aristotle taught autosuggestion’(Coué, 1923, p. 3).  Though his justification for this conclusion seems somewhat unclear, he could probably have found more material to explain and support it. 

We know, indeed, that the whole human organism is governed by the nervous system, the centre of which is the brain – the seat of thought.  In other words, the brain, or mind, controls every cell, every organ, every function of the body.  That being so, is it not clear that by means of thought we are the absolute masters of our physical organism and that, as the Ancients showed centuries ago, thought – or suggestion – can and does produce disease or cure it?  Pythagoras taught the principle of auto-suggestion to his disciples.  He wrote: “God the Father, deliver them from their sufferings, and show them what supernatural power is at their call.” (Coué, 1923, pp. 3-4)  

The practice of repeating aphorisms, short verbal “formulas”, seems to have been associated with the ancient mystery religions and oracles, and the philosophical-therapeutic sect of Pythagoras which evolved from them.  

The Ancients well knew the power – often the terrible power – contained in the repetition of a phrase of formula.  The secret of the undeniable influence they exercised through the old Oracles resided probably, nay, certainly, in the force of suggestion. (Coué, 1923, p. 27)  

The most famous formulae associated with the Delphic Oracle of Apollo, the patron god of philosophy, were “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.”  The Pythagoreans compiled lists of such aphorisms, which acquired cryptic symbolic meanings, and were referred to as akousmata, the “things listened to”, and symbola, the “symbols” or “watchwords.”  For example, according to Porphry, the precept “poke not the fire with a sword” was a reminder that one should not further provoke an angry person by attacking them with verbal criticisms; “eat not the heart”, meant that one should not wallow in morbid emotions (Porphyry, 1988, p. 131).  These Pythagorean sayings, and those derived from the Greek Oracles, may well be the precursors of the Stoic precepts (dogmata) which, as we shall see, appear to have performed a similar function. 

Excerpt from The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Complete Writings of James Braid

www.James-Braid.com

I shall now cite from a paper [the middle section of “Magic, Hypnotism, Mesmerism, etc., considered historically and physiologically”] actually published by me in The Medical Times for December 28^th 1844, a few of the wonders recorded in Ward’s “History of the Hindoos”, which they represent as facts and as special gifts imparted to them in token of the great superiority of their religious system, of inducing a state of self-hypnotism, or ecstatic trance.  They produce this condition by certain postures or modes of sitting – the minds of the devotees being engaged in acts of fixed attention, by looking at some parts of their own bodies, or at inanimate or ideal [i.e., imaginary] objects; at the same time holding their breath, i.e., suppressing their respiration.  My modes of explaining these alleged marvels are given within parentheses.  I may premise, however, that whatever idea occupies the mind of the subject before he passes into the condition, or whatever may have occurred to it accidentally or through the suggestion of others subsequently, will ever after be realised, under similar combination of circumstances, in consequence of the power of suggestion and double-conscious [dissociated] memory, as manifested in some patients even in the sub-hypnotic or waking condition, when what have been called the vigilant or waking phenomena are producible; and still more certainly during the full, active, double-conscious condition.  These principles alone, and the vivid state of the imagination, explain most of the marvels; but, with the parenthetic explanations, I trust to make them sufficiently obvious to any candid and intelligent person.

The Yogee [i.e., master of yogic meditation] who has perfected himself in the three parts of sungyamu [yogic “self-mastery”] obtains a knowledge of the past and of the future (quickened memory and excited imagination); if he apply sungyamu to sounds, to their meaning and to the consequent results, he will possess, from mere sound, universal knowledge (hypnotic patients imitate, with the utmost precision and with the greatest facility, the vocal enunciation of any language, but do not understand the meaning of the words which they utter).  He who applies sungyamu to discover the thoughts of others will know the thoughts of all.  (He will believe and talk as if he did so.)  He who does the same to his own form, and to the sight of those whose eyes are fixed upon him, will be able to render his body invisible, and to dim the sight of the observers. (Through the force of imagination, or fixed attention, or suggestion.)  He who, according to these rules, meditates on his own actions, in order that he may discover how he may most speedily reap the fruits of them, will become acquainted with the time, cause, and place of his own death.  He who, according to these rules, meditates on the strength of the powerful, so as to identify his strength with theirs, will acquire the same.  (Through concentrated attention and conviction of their physical energy, there is a most amazing manifestation of increased muscular power.)  He who meditates, in the same manner, on the sun as perfect light, will become acquainted with the state of things in every place.  (He will believe and speak as if he really did.)  By similar application of sungyamu to the cup at the bottom of the throat, he will overcome hunger and thirst; by meditation on the basilar suture, he will be capacitated to see and converse with deified persons, who range through the aerial regions; by meditation on extraordinary presence of mind, he will obtain a knowledge of all visible objects; by meditating on the seat of the mind, or on the faculty of reason, he will become acquainted with his own thoughts and those of others, past, present, and future; by meditation on the state of the Yogee who has nearly lost all consciousness of separate existence, he will recognise spirit as unassociated and perfect existence.  (Belief and vivid imagination.)  After this he will hear celestial sounds – the songs and conversations of the celestial choirs; he will have the perception of their touch in their passage through the air, his taste will become refined, and he will enjoy the constant fragrance of sweet scents.  (All this I can easily cause hypnotic patients to realise, through suggestion and their fervid imagination.)  When the Yogee, by the power of Samadhi [meditation], has destroyed the power of those works which retained the spirit in captivity, he becomes possessed of certain and unhesitating knowledge; he is enabled to trace the progress of intellect through the senses, and the path of the animal spirit through the nerves.  After this he is able to enter into any dead or living body, by the path of the senses – all the senses accompanying him, as the swarm of bees follows the queen bee; and, in this body, to act as though it were his own.  (Now, all this extravagance I can easily make hypnotic patients imagine themselves accomplishing – but, of course, it is only imaginary, just as such feats are accomplished in dreams.)

The collected power of all the senses is called the animal soul, which is distinguished by five operations connected with the vital air, or air collected in the body.  The body of the Yogee who, according to the rules of Dharanu, Dhyanu, and Sumadhee [concentration, meditation, and mystic union], meditates on the air proceeding from (…) to the head, will become light as wood, and will be able to walk on the fluid element.  He who, in the same manner, meditates on the ear and its vacuum, will hear the softest and most distant sounds, as well as those uttered in the celestial regions, etc.  (This accords with my proposition, that calling attention to any organ or function will exalt the activity of the function positively, as well as excite ideas con­nected with such organ or function.)  He who meditates on vacuum will be able to ascend in the air.  (Imaginary ascent.)  He who meditates, by the rules of sungyamu, and in a perfect manner, on the subtle elements, will overcome and be transformed into those elements; he will be capacitated to become as rarefied and atomic as he may wish, and proceed to the greatest distance; in short, he will be enabled to realise in himself the power of Deity, to subdue all his passions, to render his body invulnerable, to prevent the possibility of his abstraction being destroyed, so as to subject himself again to the effects of actions.

“By applying sungyamu to the division of the four last minutes of time, he who perfects himself in this will obtain complete knowledge of the separate elements, atoms, etc., which admit not of division of species, appearance, and place.  This knowledge brings before the Yogee all visible objects at once, so that he does not wait for the tedious process of the senses.  (Imagination, lively faith, and fixed attention, until ideas became too vivid to be corrected by an appeal to the senses and sober reason.)

The following paragraph is from the “Dabistan” [Dabistān-i Mazāhib, a 17^th century Persian religious text of a syncretistic nature]:–

The Sipasian [an ancient Zoroastrian sect] and the historians relate that, whoever carries this process to perfection rises above death; as long as he remains in the body, he can put it off and be again reunited to it; he never suffers from sickness, and is fit for all business.

So much for the lively fancy and fervid faith of these religious enthusiasts, during their dreams, in the state of self-induced hypnotism, through fixing their thoughts or sight upon some part of their own bodies, or on some ideal [i.e., imaginary] or inanimate objects, and holding their breath, or suppressing their respiration.  By an appeal, therefore, to the feats of the Hindoos, I might claim for hypnotism, or self-induced trance, quite as high pretensions for its capability of inducing clairvoyant marvels as anything adduced by the animal magnetists or Mesmerists, with all the exoteric or alleged aid which they profess to communicate or impart to their subjects, by whatever name they may call it – whether magnetic, Mesmeric, odylic, nervous, or vital force transferred from the operators into the bodies of their subjects.

It is a very widespread common misconception that hypnotism involves a state resembling unconsciousness or sleep.  This can be largely attributed to the fact that the word “hypnotism” derives from hypnos, the Greek word for sleep.  However, few people realise that the word “hypnotism” is actually an abbreviation for the longer term “neuro-hypnotism”, meaning sleep of the nervous system, as opposed to normal sleep.  It was coined around 1841 by James Braid, the Scottish surgeon whom many authorities consider to be the founder of hypnotherapy.  Braid simply meant that hypnotic subjects would typically become physically relaxed and engrossed in a single idea to the exclusion of any distractions.  Indeed, according to its founder, hypnotism was better characterised as a state of conscious concentration rather than unconsciousness. 

Moreover, Braid soon came to regret his use of the term “hypnotism” because of the misconceptions it encouraged, even during his own lifetime.  In Hypnotic Therapeutics (1853), he writes,

It is of great importance that it should be clearly understood by patients, that it is by no means generally requisite that they should lapse into the state of unconsciousness in order to ensure the salutary effects of the nervous sleep.  Many imagine, that unless they become torpid and insensible, no beneficial effect can ensue.  This is a complete misapprehension, for the happy results of innumerable cases treated with the greatest success by hypnotism, clearly prove, that cases which had resisted all ordinary treatment by the exhibition of medicines and external applications, have readily yielded to the impression made on the nervous system by this peculiar influence, even when they were perfectly conscious of all that was done, and could remember, after awaking, every circumstance that had happened during the nervous sleep.  This was strikingly verified in my own case, when I cured myself of a violent rheumatic attack by throwing myself into the nervous sleep [i.e., into self-hypnosis] for eight or nine minutes, from which I was aroused perfectly free from pain, although I had been perfectly conscious all the while.

Although some subjects entered a state of mind in which they experienced amnesia for the process, which the earlier Mesmerists had termed “artificial somnambulism”, Braid explicitly stated elsewhere that only 5-10% of his subjects experienced this response to hypnotism.  As he clearly understood, the whole notion of self-hypnosis conflicts with the assumption that hypnosis involves unconsciousness or sleep because one cannot very well be both asleep and consciously directing one’s own autosuggestions at the same time.  Self-hypnosis requires some degree of conscious concentration, or at least relaxed attention.  Hence, from its very origin, hypnotism was never conceived as a state of unconsciousness or sleep but rather as typically involving a state of focused attention, i.e., conscious attention.

Ramakrishna (1836-1886), a contemporary Indian mystic

Copyright (c) Donald Robertson, 2009.  All rights reserved.  www.UKhypnosis.com

For more information see my longer article on this subject,

James Braid on Hypnotic Meditation

Most scholars assume that hypnotism originated in 1841, in the work of James Braid, as a psychological and physiological system contrasted with the more “occult” or supernatural theories of Franz Mesmer and his followers, the “animal mangetists”.  Braid originally saw Mesmerism as the predecessor and closest analogy to his method of hypnotism.  However, within three years of his discovery, the similarities between hypnotism and various Oriental meditation practices was brought to Braid’s attention.  At this time, in the 1840s, knowledge of Oriental meditation was very limited in England.  However, Victorian soldiers and officials of the East India company sent word back from the further reaches of the empire.  Braid explains, in his final essay, On Hypnotism (1860), written as a summary of his life’s work for the French Academy of Sciences,

I had already worked for three years to define hypnotism, the process which consists in fixing the eyes on a point and concentrating the attention, and I had demonstrated that it was an influence of a subjective nature which caused the sleep, when, in 1844, by carrying out research for a history of magic and witchcraft, as well as Mesmerism and hypnotism, I discovered in The History of Hindoos by [William] Ward and in the Dubistan (History of the religious sects in India) [Dabistān-i Mazāhib, a 17^th century Persian religious text] developments which, through the practices of Fakirs and Yogins [Sufi and Hindu mystics], wholly confirmed my subjective theory.

Braid contrasted his “subjective” theory of hypnotism with the older “objective” theory of the Mesmerists.  By this he simply meant that whereas the Mesmerists believed that they were putting their subjects into a trance by channeling an invisible force, “animal magnetism”, into their bodies, Braid and other sceptics disputed the objective reality of this force and argued instead that hypnotism was mainly the result of the psychological (subjective) activity of the hypnotic subject themselves.  In other words, as many hypnotists put it today, “All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.”

Indeed, it is notable that there was no such concept or even expression as “self-magnetism” or “self-mesmerism”.  Braid, as well as introducing the concept of hypnotism, also coined the term “self-hypnotism” to refer to the fact that one could hypnotise oneself, and he recounts, in a memorable passage, how he used self-hypnotism to manage his own severe attacks of rheumatic pain.  Indeed, as Braid defined hypnotism as a state of focused attention upon a single dominant idea or mental image, accompanied by expectation of a response, hypnotism and self-hypnotism were never really two distinct activities.  Hypnotism was seen by Braid as a process whereby someone, the hypnotist, assists someone else, the hypnotic subject, to focus their attention for a prolonged period on a single train of thought with a sense of growing confidence in some response occuring.  Hypnotism is really just assisted or guided self-hypnosis according to this, the original theory.  The analogy with yogic meditation soon became obvious to Braid,

The Fakirs and Yogins have caused ecstatic trance in themselves for 2,400 years, for religious purpose, by a process quite similar to that which I taught my patients so they could hypnotise themselves using, i.e., continual fixation upon the end of the nose or another part of the body or an imaginary object, and with intense attention and while holding or slowing down their breath. 

Indeed, Braid usually helped people to focus their attention, inducing hypnotism, by asking them to stare patiently at a single point, e.g., the tip of his silver lancet case, or the top of a bottle, or a chandalier in one case.  However, he felt the object of concentration, in this initial (induction) stage, was irrelevant, so long as it was relatively “unexciting”, simple and bland enough for one to focus upon without distraction, to the exclusion of other things.  Braid observed that when this was done for a few minutes, the eyes would close and people would often report very vivid and spontaneous bodily sensations of an unusual nature, especially if their attention was drawn to their body and their awareness and expectation heightened.  However, he also observed that this “diamond glare” of attention, as one of his followers put it, could be transposed onto some positively therapeutic idea suggested by the hypnotist, or chosen by the subject, such as the idea or image of the body healing some disease or simply a general sense of confidence and wellbeing.

Moreover, even in his earliest writings, Braid refers to hypnotism being induced by means of focusing the gaze on the tip of one’s own finger, or some other part of the body, including the centre of the forehead.  He was struck by the similarity between this method and the Oriental practice of focusing attention upon the tip of one’s nose or the centre of the forehead in meditation that he soon came to see Oriental meditation as the true precursor of hypnotism, and a closer analogy to it than Mesmerism.  Both hypnotism and meditation could be practised by oneself, and were understood as psychological and physiological activities inter-acting, mind-body techniques, whereas animal magnetism was (falsely) assumed to require the presence of a skilled Mesmerist.  Hence, the analogy with meditation provided Braid with unlikely support for his debunking of Mesmerism.

I did not know of the practices of Fakirs and Yogins, when I published my method of hypnotising; they confirm, in the most satisfactory manner, my subjective theory, at the expense of the objective theory of the magnetisers. 

From the point at which he discovered these books on meditation and began writing articles about them, Braid was undoubtedly encouraged to define hypnotism more and more as a form of “mental abstraction” or “monoideism”, as he later called it, meaning focused attention upon a single idea, image, or train of thought.

Many hypnotherapists today, and their clients, have been exposed to yogic or Buddhist meditation techniques, etc., and immediately intuit some similarity between the theory and practice of hypnotism and those of meditation.  It should further reinforce that observation for them to realise that the founder of hypnotherapy, almost from the outset, was aware of this connection and that hypnotism itself evolved, in part, under the influence of Oriental meditation techniques.

Copyright (c) Donald Robertson, 2008-2009

A.E. van Vogt was a popular science fiction influenced by General Semantics, who co-authored a serious textbook on clinical hypnotherapy.  This excerpt serves to illustrate the technique of symbol suggestion in circulation among hypnotherapists as far back as the New Nancy School.  This simple technique can be used in self-hypnosis training and resembles the use of techniques in other models of therapy, such as collapsed coping statements in CBT. 

Mechanics of Auto-Suggestion

(Excerpt from Cooke & van Vogt, The Hypnotism Handbook, 1956) 

In formulating suggestions for the patient to use in auto-hypnosis, the following rules apply:

1. Write it. Write the suggestion out in accordance with the laws of hetero-hypnotic therapy […]. Writing forces us to crystallize our ideas. It makes us analyse the problem that we are facing, and is an aid to clear thinking.

2. Symbolise it.  Give it a key word or idea, a code word. By definition, then, the symbol represents the entire formulation, exactly as in a trans-oceanic cable code a nonsense word may represent a complex sentence or idea. Select a simple word, preferably (but not necessarily) one that carries out the implication of the entire suggestion. For example, a therapy typed out single space and occupying a page which is designed to help a patient overcome feelings of inferiority could be symbolized with the word, “Confidence.”

3. Edit it.  Read the written suggestion to insure that it complies with the basic laws. Revise it. Reconstruct it. Expand it. Condense it. Recopy the revised version and destroy the first draft.

4. Read it aloud.  Before hypnotizing yourself, carefully read the entire suggestion to your self aloud. When in the presence of others where reading might be impossible, the suggestion can be read silently but very carefully. Reading aloud is preferable because it compels the uttering of every word. In reading silently, we are accustomed to scanning and skipping. When a suggestion has been properly edited, every word is important.

5. Hypnotise yourself.  Use the particular method that has been taught you.

6. Think the symbol. Or whisper it to yourself. […] You have given yourself the suggestion fully and forcefully as a pre-hypnotic suggestion. You have, so to speak, loaded the gun. When you think the symbol, you are merely pulling the trigger on a gun which is already loaded.  An alternate method […] is to roll the paper containing the suggestion and hold it in one hand or tape it to the hand. The presence of the paper, which has been previously read, serves as a trigger.

Symbol Suggestion in The New Nancy School

Charles Baudouin explained how various methods in yoga, such as repetitively chanting the Hindu sacred syllable AUM, can be seen as means of inducing a state of relaxed concentration similar to hypnosis. 

Let us return to autohypnosis, as described earlier in our own text.  Since it can be induced by immobilising the attention on a mental state, why should we not choose, for this mental state (in preference to the bead-telling or to the counting), the very idea which is to be the object of the suggestion?  There is, in fact, no reason to the contrary, provided that the idea fulfils the requisite conditions, provided that it holds the attention rather than that the attention holds it.  We must be able to think of it mechanically; ere long in spite of ourselves, as if we were obsessed by it; in the same way as that in which we listen to the sound of water running.

                A very simple means of securing this is to condense the idea which is to be the object of the suggestion, to sum it up in a brief phrase which can readily be graven on the memory, and to repeat it over and over again like a lullaby.  The state of hypnosis thereupon ensues, with the effortless contention characteristic of the condition.  We pass unawares into the preliminary stage of hypnosis.  Relaxation occurs without our noticing it; reverie is neutralised by the presence of an idea which makes around itself a mental void.  The states we have analysed above are now synthesised into a single state which shares the characters of them all; which exhibits phases recalling now one, now another; but which differs from each.  This condition is one of pre-eminent autosuggestibility.  If we graft it upon a condition of spontaneous outcropping, as upon the morning and evening states bordering upon sleep, we shall obtain maximum results.  But it may also be usefully attained during the waking hours.  This method of repeating a phrase has often been recommended by American writers. […]

                Let us add that, to prevent the mind from wandering, it may be well to repeat the phrase aloud, or at least to sketch its pronunciation with lips and tongue as we utter it mentally.  This motor accompaniment favours the acquirement of the habit we wish to form; gives it a certain solidity; and acts as a leash or leading string whereby, without effort, our thought is guided towards its object. (Baudouin, 1920: 151).

The technique also resembles, in some respects, the “Relaxation Response” method made famous by Herbert Benson in his research upon comparative relaxation and meditation techniques, and widely-employed in the field of stress management.

Emile Coué (1857-1926)

Couéism: “Conscious Autosuggestion”

Copyright (c) Donald Robertson 2006-2009.  All rights reserved.

Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux.

“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” (Coué)

When the French pharmacist Émile Coué (1857-1926) was aged 28 he met the great Ambroise-Auguste Liébault (1823-1904), himself a country doctor, and assisted him for about two years in his hypnotic clinic at Nancy.  By 1901, Coué had started to employ a technique of hypnotic induction by graduated waking suggestions.  However, by 1910 Coué had abandoned classical hypnotism in favour of his technique of “conscious autosuggestion”, in which subjects are taught how to use suggestion and imagination for themselves.  At this point Coué founded a movement he termed the “New Nancy School”, in reference to the Nancy School of hypnosis founded by Liébault, who had passed away a few years earlier.  Coué makes it clear that he abandoned the hypnotic inductions of Liébault, and his eminent student Hippolyte Bernheim, because he found that some people did not “sleep” when instructed to do so and, seeing this as failure, became prematurely disillusioned with the treatment.

 [Woman:] “I was under Bernheim [as a patient], he tried to make me sleep but was unable to do so.”

 [Coué:] “It is not practical to make people sleep, because if you are not successful, they say that as [sic.] they cannot be cured!  Therefore I send no-one to sleep.”  (Coué, 1923: 42-43).

 Coué attempted through the very name “conscious autosuggestion” to address the two most fundamental misconceptions about hypnotism,

1. The client is normally conscious and not asleep, unconscious, or in a “trance”.
2. The client is not under the hypnotist’s control or power but responds primarily because he voluntarily accepts suggestions in the form of autosuggestion.

Unusually for the period, Coué’s books were written in a lively, “popular” style and contain transcripts of his seminars where he is shown interacting with patients and answering their questions, giving a very vivid impression of these events and his character.  A more formal expression of his work, based upon a series of university lectures, was published his disciple Charles Baudouin in Suggestion & Autosuggestion (1920).  Baudouin himself was an educationalist, psychotherapist and professor of philosophy at the Rousseau Institute and University of Geneva.  Prior to the publication of Baudouin’s work in 1920, literature on the New Nancy School was scarce, 

He [Coué] was written no more than a few articles in the bulletin of the school, and some papers for psychological congresses.  Even scantier are the writings of his pupils.  The New Nancy School supplied the elements of an entire psychology, but this psychology remains unwritten.

His ideas seem mainly to have spread through his seminars and word of mouth.  Coué was undoubtedly a peculiarly charismatic man.  Baudouin, in a preface to his book, illustrates his character by saying, “His whole appearance is as far removed as possible from affectation; you feel that he is ready at any moment to remove his coat and give a helping hand.”  A photograph shows Coué surrounded by a group of at least sixty patients, suggesting the popularity of his free-of-charge group clinic, which took place at Troyes and subsequently Nancy.  Baudouin says he saw him treating over a hundred patients each day, carrying out 40,000 consultations per year (Baudouin, 1920: 14).  In the transcripts, he speaks to his audience of patients in ‘pigeon’ English and is prone to well-meaning bossiness and excitable outbursts, so that a sense of his Gallic accent and temperament survives in the text.  Some have dubbed him the father of modern “self-help”, though that ignores the fact that many self-help books were written long before his time.  Many people have heard of Couéism, a popularity curiously illustrated by the fact that a description of the Coué method, was included in the lyrics of the well-known pop song by John Lennon, Beautiful Boy, 

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy,
“Before you go to sleep,
“Say a little prayer,
“Every day in every way,
“It’s getting better and better.” 

– John Lennon, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), 1980 

The Laws of Autosuggestion

The two basic theoretical principles of Couéism are, 

1. All suggestion is autosuggestion.
2. Internal conflict occurs between the will and imagination, but the imagination is always stronger. (q.v., Coué, 1923: 19) 

These lead on to the famous laws of autosuggestion, 

1. The Law of Concentrated Attention

Ideas upon which attention becomes focused become correspondingly magnified in their effect.  Spontaneous autosuggestions may capture the attention automatically.  Conscious autosuggestions must be repeated with mental focus, and with certainty and faith in them.  This obviously resembles Braid’s definition of hypnotism as focused attention upon a dominant idea (“monoideism”).

2. The Law of Auxiliary Emotion

“When, for one reason or another, an idea is enveloped in a powerful emotion, there is more likelihood that this idea will be suggestively realised.” (Baudouin, 1920: 114).  The auxiliary role of emotion in capturing attention and transforming an idea into bodily action is a key feature of spontaneous negative autosuggestion.  Negative ideas stick in our minds because of the powerful emotions attached to them, especially the emotion of fear.  Baudouin stresses that this gives spontaneous autosuggestion a kind of initial advantage, as many people implicitly recognise, because our deliberate attempts at conscious autosuggestion are unlikely to be accompanied by such strong and sincere emotion.

3. The Law of Reversed Effort

The law of reversed effort raises a second obstacle to the use of autosuggestion because the more we try to consciously struggle with a dominant idea the more powerful its effects become.  “When an idea imposes itself on the mind to such an extent as to give rise to a suggestion, all the conscious efforts which the subject makes in order to counteract this suggestion are not merely without the desired effect, but they actually run counter to the subject’s conscious wishes and tend to intensify the suggestion.” (Baudouin, 1920: 116).  He elaborates by describing the law of reversed effect as exemplified by the self-antagonistic attitude of mind that says, “I would like to… but I cannot.”  This notion might be seen as similar to the modern technique of “reverse psychology”, a persuasion technique which aims, paradoxically, to persuade someone to accept an idea by suggesting the opposite to them.

            This obstacle is surmounted by the special prescription of the New Nancy School which insists that conscious autosuggestion should be used without the slightest tension caused by too much effort and with an accompanying sense that things are easily accomplished.

When you make conscious autosuggestions, do it naturally, simply, with conviction, and above all without any effort.  If unconscious and bad suggestions are so often realised, it is because they are made without effort.  (Coué, 1922: 36)

Imagine things are easy and already on the road to being accomplished, and avoid trying to wrestle with them through force of willpower.

4. The Law of Subconscious Teleology

“When the end has been suggested the subconscious finds means for its realisation.” (Baudouin, 1920: 117).  Autosuggestion therefore focuses upon the goal and allows the mind to spontaneously find its own means to achieve that goal.  It is true that this attitude seems conducive to autosuggestion, though it should be qualified by adding that in terms of complex or long-term goals it is usually advisable to break them down into steps and stages because the mind sometimes has a limited ability to work out solutions spontaneously.

The Method of Conscious Autosuggestion

Probably because of the emphasis placed upon preparation of the subject, Coué only felt it was necessary to instruct his patients in two main autosuggestion practices. 

1.         The General Method

His famous general purpose formula, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”  This was to be repeated at least 20 times every single night, eyes closed, spoken monotonously in a whisper, as one relaxed before drifting off to sleep.  Coué even suggests using a rosary to count the repetitions, a practice similar to the mantra yoga of Indian.  However, he shrewdly adds the caveat, “Say it as many times as you like; only don’t let it become an obsession.” (My Method: 148)

            The words “in every way” were to be given special emphasis, with an awareness that they refer to both physical and mental improvement.  It is a “catch all” suggestion and the subject must feel that it refers to every possible goal they might have in mind.  However, Baudouin stresses that this generic formula was most effective when the subject had previously reflected on the details of their therapeutic goals, thereby rendering “in every way” a meaningful expression.  This kind of concrete analysis of one’s goals is part of the normal process of therapy; consequently, Baudouin advises people who lack this experience to add the following component to the exercise,

In addition he should, during the day, from time to time produce a state of [self-hypnosis], and should then let his mind review the detailed series of desired modifications.  Only in obstinate cases will it be necessary to do this every day.  But the subject will find the practice extremely useful whenever he has a few minutes to spare.  (Baudouin, 1920: 158)

2.         The Specific Method. 

The specific formula, simply “It is going” (of a pain or acute symptom of distress).  Coué actually says,

I advise English-speaking people to stick to the French version: it being much easier to say “ça passe” quickly than the longer and more awkward expression “it is passing” or “it is going.”  (Coué, My Method, 1923: 31)

He thought this was best done very rapidly, “at the risk of gabbling”, which he believed helped prevent the intrusion of contrary thoughts which might conflict with the suggestion.  Coué advised his students to rub the affected area, “lightly but rapidly”, at the location of pain or tension, or to pass the hand over the forehead if the symptom were purely an abstract thought or feeling.  In his seminars, he would rub the area himself and repeat “It is going, it is going…”, while asking the subject to mimic him by repeating the suggestion along with him.  The following account is worth quoting in full,

Therefore every time that you have a pain, physical or otherwise, you will go quietly to your room (it is better if you can do this, but you can do it also in the middle of the road if necessary), but if you go to your room, sit down and shut your eyes, pass your hand lightly across your forehead if it is mental distress, or upon the part that hurts if it is a pain in any part of the body, and repeat the words: It is going, it is going, etc.  Very rapidly, even at the risk of gabbling, it is of no importance.  The essential idea is to say: it is going, it is going, so quickly, that it is impossible for a thought of contrary nature to force itself between the words.  We thus actually think it is going, and as all ideas that we fix upon the mind become a reality for us, the pain, physical or mental vanishes.  And should the pain return, repeat the process 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 times if necessary, for it is better to pass the entire day saying: It is going! than to suffer pain and complain about it.  Be more patient than your pain, drive it back to its last entrenchments.  And you will find that the more you use this process, the less you will have to, that is to say, that if today you use it 50 times, tomorrow you will only use it 48, and the next day 46 and so on… so that at the end of a relatively short space of time, you will have no need to use it at all.  (Coué, 1923: 82)

According to Baudouin, Coué prescribed that the special suggestion should be “gabbled” rapidly to avoid the intrusion of counter-acting thoughts because it aims at a simple sensory change.  By contrast, the general suggestion should be repeated slowly (“piously”) because it is a high-level instruction which requires some spontaneous reflection on the specific changes which it entails (Baudouin, 1920: 162-163).

            Paradoxically, Baudouin suggests that more complex methods of autosuggestion are only necessary for less intelligent people who fail to understand the basic underlying mechanism of suggestion in its simplicity.  These people, he says, assume that the technique does the work, “whereas the real agent is the imagination itself.”  

Above all, avoid falling into a superstition about exercises; and avoid an undue multiplicity of exercises.  We know that the practice of autosuggestion is simple and easy; that it need not occasion any loss of time; that everyone can and everyone should acquire the art.  The morning and evening concentration is the basis of the whole thing.  Exercises are no more than adjuvants, doubtless of great value.  But we must be careful not to overestimate their importance.  (Baudouin, 1920: 170) 

He stresses, however, that “People are inclined to disbelieve in the efficacy of anything simple” (Baudouin, 1920: 167). 

The Law of Converted (Reversed) Effort

According to Coué, willpower merely strengthens the imagination when it attempts to oppose it.  (q.v., Coué, 1923: 20).  He gives the example of stage fright or compulsive giggling which, as everyone knows, tend to be made worse by the struggle to suppress them by willpower alone.  As Baudouin puts it, when we are in the grip of a negative idea it dominates the imagination and emotions and insofar as we try to use force against it, in the form of conscious effort or willpower, without substituting a positive counter-idea, we merely aggravate the situation by strengthening the mental image of the problem.  He says that Coué used the simile of a man trapped in quicksand, sinking deeper the more he struggles, to illustrate the plight of the neurotic trapped in the mire of his own negative autosuggestions (Baudouin, 1920: 38).

            Baudouin clearly believed that the Law of Reversed Effort was the central defining characteristic of whole Coué’s method.  Excessive conscious effort presupposes and evokes the idea of failure, thereby risking the evocation of antagonistic ideas.  For example, the conscious effort to fall asleep is likely, in many cases, to focus attention also on the risk of staying awake, and thereby to stimulate conflicting ideo-reflex responses. 

Voluntary effort presupposes the idea of a resistance to be overcome.  It comprises both action and reaction.  The two notions are simultaneously [resent at the moment of the effort.  If, then (and this is a matter of the first importance), I concentrate voluntary attention on an idea, which implies my making an effort, I am simultaneously conscious of an action toward this idea, and of a resistance in consequence of which the idea continually tends to escape me, so that I must unceasingly recall my wandering attention.  (Baudouin, 1920: 123) 

Hence, spontaneous and reflective autosuggestion come into direct conflict and create an antagonism in the mind which paralyses the ideo-motor response, 

In these circumstances, we do not think a single idea, but two conflicting ideas.  And if our state of consciousness is sufficiently reinforced by attention for the origination of a suggestion to be possible, it is not a single suggestion that will result, but there will be two conflicting suggestions which will neutralise one another more or less perfectly.  The yield, therefore, will be far less copious than in the case of spontaneous suggestion.  And if it should unfortunately happen that the sentiment of effort and resistance predominates, we shall probably arrive at a negative result, the reverse of that which we desire, a result whose dimensions will be proportional to the efforts we have made to avoid it.  (Baudouin, 1920: 124) 

It should be noted that Coué thought it essential to believe that change is easy, this is one of the pre-requisite beliefs of his method.  

Always think that what you have to do is easy, if possible.  In this state of mind you will not spend more of your strength than just what is necessary; if you consider it difficult, you will spend ten, twenty times more strength than you need; in other words you will waste it.  (Coué, 1922: 38) 

When he states that effort is not necessary it is because, in this sphere, things are as difficult or as easy as we believe them to be.  As Baudouin puts it, “effortlessness is a habit we must acquire if we are to practise autosuggestion.” (Baudouin, 1920: 136).  Effort becomes superfluous if we can acquire belief in the ease of change.  Nevertheless, effort and willpower are an interference but faith in oneself and confidence are essential, 

Make this autosuggestion with confidence, with faith, with the certainty of obtaining what you want.  The greater the conviction, the greater and more rapid will be the results.  (Coué, 1922: 94). 

Baudouin makes it clear that the New Nancy School consistently found this Law of Reversed Effort to explain the initial setbacks encountered by novice students of autosuggestion, who were, as we might put it today, “trying too hard” and making things more difficult as a result, 

If we enquire of the new “pupils,” of those that have failed in their first attempts, concerning the manner in which they made their suggestions, we get some such answer as this: “I took a lot of pains; I tried as hard as I could.”  But as soon as the pupil is made to realise that herein precisely lies his error, he promptly begins to make headway.  (Baudouin, 1920: 125). 

Coué therefore frequently insists that his clients exert “no effort” but rather imagination.  This raises a minor semantic paradox, because using one’s imagination itself might be seen as an effort of will, albeit channelled in another direction.  Coué acknowledges this, 

I cannot too strongly insist that in the practice of auto-suggestion the exercise of will must be strictly avoided, except in the initial phase of directing or guiding the imagination along the desired lines.  This is absolutely the only manifestation of will necessary, or even desirable.  (My Method, 14) 

For this reason, Coué recommends practising autosuggestion in the morning or at night, on the verge of sleep, at a time when conscious effort is naturally suspended by feelings of drowsiness.  During the daytime, autosuggestions are repeated very rapidly to prevent the mind from straying onto antagonistic ideas.

            It seems likely that Coué’s observations about the laws of suggestion are drawn directly from his experiments with suggestion experiments, such as Chevreul’s pendulum.  For instance, when subjects are asked to “try to stop the pendulum moving by willing it not to swing”, the opposite often happens, and it swings more rapidly. 

Coué’s Classic Examples

Speaking of autosuggestion, Coué writes, 

It is a sort of little trick.  When one learns the trick he is able to become master of himself.  (Coué, 1923: 119) 

To help students get the knack of autosuggestion, he repeatedly makes use of the same set of examples intended to support his argument that the conscious will is weaker than the imagination, 

1.         The Insomnia Example.  Coué points to the common experience that when someone tries to get to sleep they end up achieving the opposite, keeping themselves awake by their efforts.  He could have added the corollary that they may, however, fall asleep if they believe they have been given sleeping tablet, which is actually a placebo.

2.         The Forgetting Example.  When people forget a name they often find that  the more they try to remember it the more frustrated they become, but when they stop making the effort it “pops back into” their mind unbidden.

3.         The Laughter Example.  When people have an uncontrollable fit of the giggles they often complain that the more pressure is put upon them to stop laughing the more they find it difficult to stop.  Coué does not refer to the theatrical notion of actors’ “corpsing” on stage, but that might be a good example of the problem.

4.         The Cycling Example.  When someone is learning to ride a bike and they worry about hitting a bump and falling off, the more they struggle to maintain balance the more likely they seem to be to achieve the opposite and crash into things.  (He could have used the example of people struggling to swim, who thrash around and go under rather than calmly treading water.)

5.         The Stammering Example.  The more worried a stammerer becomes about their speech the more errors they tend to make.  Yet when alone they may be able to read aloud without flaw.

6.         The “Walking the Plank” Example.  Taking an illustration from the famous French philosopher Blaise Pascal, Coué asks us to imagine walking across a long plank of wood placed on the floor.  He asks whether we would be able to do so with the same ease if the plank were suspended “across a street at the height of one of your American skyscrapers.”  The anxious imagination of falling interferes with our conscious intention to perform an act as simple as walking in a straight line. 

From these points, Coué would conclude with flourish, 

Therefore, I repeat, that every time the WILL and the IMAGINATION come in conflict, not only can we not do that which we wish, but we do precisely the contrary.  (Coué, 1923: 63) 

These arguments are of interest mainly for their rhetorical value.  Coué found from experience that they were simple and universal enough to carry his point in front of a variety of different audiences. 

Coué’s Practical Experiments

Coué implicitly acknowledged the role of ideo-motor action, termed “ideo-reflex” by Baudouin, the physiological process by which the imagination exerts a causal effect upon certain physical processes.  “Every thought entirely filling our mind becomes true for us and tends to transform itself into action.” (Coué, 1922: 15).  He uses a series of standardised “waking suggestion” experiments to demonstrate what he means by the conflict between will and imagination.  Similar “suggestion tests” are now widely used in modern stage hypnosis and clinical hypnotherapy.  He describes the group explanation and demonstrations he gives, quite colourfully, as cultivating the soil of his audience’s minds to prepare them for planting the seeds of therapeutic autosuggestion (Coué, 1923: 124). 

            They must understand autosuggestion to benefit from the method, and his performance is crucial in building their confidence in themselves and their ability to influence their mind and body.  If people who have merely read about the Coué method fail to make it work, it is perhaps because they have not prepared themselves beforehand in a similar manner.  If Coué knows that the subject can respond to suggestion tests, he knows they have probably understood how to make autosuggestion work and they are ready to put it into practice. 

The Hand Clasp Experiment

Subjects are asked to clasp their hands tightly together and straighten their arms.  They are asked to tell themselves “I will open my hands, but I CANNOT, I CANNOT!”  Sometimes muttering the words rapidly under their breath.  To which Coué adds forcefully, “Your hands lock tighter and tighter, always tighter!”  He continues to suggest that the hands are clenching tighter and cannot be separated by effort so long as the imagination is fixed on the contrary idea. Sometimes muttering the words rapidly under their breath.   After a pause, he then instructs the client to tell themselves, “I CAN!”, to imagine they can, and to separate their hands.  Indeed, this particular test has become a mainstay of hypnotic demonstrations over the intervening years.  Note that Coué’s emphasis upon repeating “I CANNOT” aloud before turning this into “I CAN” might be taken to resemble the notion of self-efficacy statements in Bandura’s research. 

The Postural Sway Experiment

The subject stands tense and rigid like a plank and is instructed to suggest to himself that he is falling forward, or falling back, to be caught by Coué. 

The Fist-Clench Experiment

The subject clenches their fist and suggests to themselves that it cannot open, after an initial effort they tell themselves it can open again. 

The Pen-Drop Experiment

The subject grasps a pen between their fingers and suggests to themselves, and imagines, that they cannot release it and let it drop.  Coué asks them to imagine that the more they try to drop it the more tightly their fingers grasp until they change tack and imagine their fingers releasing instead. 

The Hand Stuck Experiment

The subject presses their palm onto a tabletop and suggests that it is stuck in place and cannot be lifted.  

The Stiff Leg Experiment

The subject imagines their legs are stiff and stuck in place so they cannot walk. 

The Stuck in Chair Experiment

The subject imagines being glued to their chair so that they cannot stand up.

Coué also refers to the well-known “sucking a lemon” experiment (My Method) in which subjects are asked to visualise in detail that they are sucking a lemon and notice the tendency for the mouth to salivate, an elementary example of the ideo-reflex response, or the effect of autosuggestion and imagination upon the autonomic processes of the body.

            These techniques take the form either of autosuggestions of one simple muscular movement (e.g., postural sway) or of two antagonistic muscular responses (e.g., hand clasp) which cause a kind of catalepsy in response to challenges to resist the original dominant idea.  Baudouin favoured the use of Chevreul’s famous “exploratory pendulum” experiment, and used this as a precursor to other suggestion tests.  He felt this experiment worked best of all, probably because it inherently amplifies the ideo-motor response and involves a simple movement rather than a challenge entailing antagonistic responses.  

The Conclusion to his Seminar

Coué (1923: 73) ends his seminars by asking his subjects to close their eyes.  Despite rejecting the label “self-hypnosis”, he accepts that closing the eyes and relaxing helps to focus the mind on the imagination.  He then delivers a long series of positive suggestions for the whole group, which each person is to repeat internally.  He begins by gracefully reassuring the audience that with their consent, his suggestions will remain fixed permanently in their mind and have an effect upon “the whole organism”, and they can be accepted easily because they are seen to be helpful and for the audience’s good.  What follows is a fairly traditional hypnosis script, focused on general physical well-being and healthy functioning.  He concludes with a powerful statement of self-efficacy or “ego-strengthening”, 

Finally and above all, and this is most essential for everyone, if up to the present you have felt a certain distrust of yourself, this distrust from now onwards, will gradually disappear, and will give place to a feeling of confidence in yourself.  YOU WILL HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF, you hear me, YOU WILL HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF.  I repeat it, and this confidence will enable you to do whatever you want to do well, even very well, whatever it may be, on condition, naturally, that it is reasonable […]. 

                Believing that the thing which you wish to do is easy, it becomes so for you, although it may appear difficult to others.  And you will do this thing quickly and well, with pleasure, without fatigue, without effort; while, on the other hand, had you considered it difficult or impossible, it would have become so for you, simply because you would have thought it so!  (Coué, 1923: 77-78) 

Modern hypnotists believe it is better to focus mainly on the solution, or where it is necessary to mention a problem or mistake, to speak of it briefly first and then follow by referring in more depth to a more positive outcome.  (Indeed, this seems to follow from Coué’s own theory.)  Nevertheless, the overall effect of these seminars must have given participants an impressive sense of the potential of autosuggestion. 

Bibliography

The best summary of the New Nancy School approach is Charles Baudouin’s popular Suggestion & Autosuggestion (1920).  I have referred to the following books by Coué, which may be of interest to the reader.  They are available in a wide variety of editions, some available free of charge on internet websites, 

Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)

How to Practice Suggestion & Autosuggestion (1923)

My Method (1923)

Appendix: How to Practise Conscious Autosuggestion

Excerpt from Émile Coué’s Self-Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)

Every morning before getting up and every evening as soon as you are in bed, shut your eyes, and repeat twenty times in succession, moving your lips (this is indispensible) and counting mechanically on a long string with twenty knots, the following phrase: “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”  Do not think of anything particular, as the words “in every way” apply to everything.  Make this autosuggestion with confidence, with faith, with the certainty of obtaining what you want.  The greater the conviction, the greater and the more rapid will be the results obtained.

Further, every time in the course of the day or night that you feel any distress physical or mental, immediately affirm to yourself that you will not consciously contribute to it, and that you are going to make it disappear; then isolate yourself as much as possible, shut your eyes, and passing your hand over your forehead, if it is something mental, or over the part which is painful, if it is something physical, repeat extremely quickly, moving your lips, the words: “It is going, it is going”, etc., etc., as long as it may be necessary.  With a little practice the physical or mental distress will have vanished in 20 to 25 seconds.  Begin again whenever it is necessary.  Avoid carefully any effort in practising autosuggestion.

Donald Robertson
The UK College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

www.UKhypnosis.com

It is commonly said that seeing is believing, but feeling is the very truth. I shall, therefore, give the result of my experience of hypnotism in my own person. In the middle of September, 1844, I suffered from a most severe attack of rheumatism, implicating the left side of the neck and chest, and the left arm. At first the pain was moderately severe, and I took some medicine to remove it; but, instead of this, it became more and more violent, and had tormented me for three days, and was so excruciating, that it entirely deprived me of sleep for three nights successively, and on the last of the three nights I could not remain in any one posture for five minutes, from the severity of the pain. On the forenoon of the next day, whilst visiting my patients, every jolt of the carriage I could only compare to several sharp instruments being thrust through my shoulder, neck, and chest. A full inspiration was attended with stabbing pain, such as is experienced in pleurisy. When I returned home for dinner I could neither turn my head, lift my arm, nor draw a breath, without suffering extreme pain. In this condition I resolved to try the effects of hypnotism. I requested two friends, who were present, and who both understood the system, to watch the effects, and arouse me when I had passed sufficiently into the condition; and, with their assurance that they would give strict attention to their charge, I sat down and hypnotised myself, extending the extremities. At the expiration of nine minutes they aroused me, and, to my agreeable surprise, I was quite free from pain, being able to move in any way with perfect ease. I say agreeably surprised, on this account; I had seen like results with many patients; but it is one thing to hear of pain, and another to feel it. My suffering was so exquisite that I could not imagine anyone else ever suffered so intensely as myself on that occasion; and, therefore, I merely expected a mitigation, so that I was truly agreeably surprised to find myself quite free from pain. I continued quite easy all the afternoon, slept comfortably all night, and the following morning felt a little stiffness, but no pain. A week thereafter I had a slight return, which I removed by hypnotising myself once more; and I have remained quite free from rheumatism ever since, now nearly six years. - Braid, J. (1850). Observations on Trance or Human Hybernation

James Braid on Hypnotic Meditation

Copyright © Donald Robertson, 2009.  All rights reserved.

Mental equanimity may be attained by regulating the exhalation and restraint of the breath.  Or the wayward mind may be pacified by focusing attention upon a single object. […] Alternatively, one can meditate by focusing attention upon the experience of dreaming, or the state of dreamless sleep [yoga nidra]. – Patañjali, Yoga Sutras, c. 250 B.C., § 1.34-38 

The development of hypnotism, as opposed to Mesmerism, in the middle of the 19^th century, involved a number of comparisons made with Oriental meditation techniques such as Hindu yoga.  James Braid saw the similarities between the effects of meditation and hypnotism, both psychological and physiological, as providing indirect support for his claim that they were produced by the mind and behaviour of the subject rather than by “animal magnetism” or any special power of the operator, as the Mesmerists had formerly maintained.  Though Braid himself had access to very limited information about eastern meditation practices, he perceived a close analogy with self-hypnosis which appears to have influenced the early development of hypnotherapy theory and practice. 

In his book Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Magnetism, etc. (1852), James Braid, the founding father of hypnotherapy, defined hypnotism as a state of focused attention upon a single idea or mental image. 

I feel pretty confident that whoever will undertake the investigation of hypnotic phenomena with a candid mind, and untrammelled by any previous prejudices in favour of the mystical and transcendental, may very soon satisfy himself that the real origin and essence of the hypnotic condition, is the induction of a habit of abstraction or mental concentration, in which, as in reverie or spontaneous abstraction, the powers of the mind are so much engrossed with a single idea or train of thought, as, for the nonce, to render the individual unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, all other ideas, impressions, or trains of thought.  The hypnotic sleep, therefore, is the very antithesis or opposite mental and physical condition to that which precedes and accompanies common sleep; for the latter arises from a diffusive state of mind, or complete loss of power of fixing the attention, with suspension of voluntary power. (Braid, 1852) 

As Braid was eager to clarify, although the Greek word hypnos does mean “sleep”, in his view hypnosis was fundamentally a state of conscious attention, virtually the opposite of normal sleep.  Moreover, Braid quotes the following colourful account from a book written by one of his own subjects, the doctor and author J. J. G. Wilkinson, 

The atom of sleep is diffusion; the mind and body are dissolved in unconsciousness; they go off into nothing, through the fine powder of infinite variety, and die of no attention; common sleep is impersonal.  The unit of hypnotism is intense attention, abstraction – the personal ego pushed to nonentity. […] Patients can produce the hypnotic state upon themselves, without a second party; although a second will often strengthen the result by his acts or presence, just as one who stood by and told you that you were to succeed in a certain work would nerve your arm with fresh confidence.  (Wilkinson, 1851) 

Hence, this is one of the earliest reports by a hypnotised subject reflecting upon their own experience, having actually undergone hypnotisation.  

Braid explains that a great many effects may be induced in this “state of mental concentration”, by means of spontaneous ideas or those suggested by the hypnotist.  Again, he illustrates this with a quotation from Wilkinson’s own account after being hypnotised, 

The preliminary state (of hypnotism) is that of abstraction, and this abstraction is the logical premise of what follows.  Abstraction tends to become more and more abstract, narrower and narrower; it tends to unity, and afterwards to nullity.  There, then, the patient is, at the summit of attention, with no object left – a mere statue of attention – a listening, expectant life – a perfectly undistracted faculty, dreaming of a lessening and lessening mathematical point, the end of his mind sharpened away to nothing.  What happens?  Any sensation that appeals is met by this brilliant attention, and receives its diamond glare, being perceived with a force of leisure of which our distracted life affords only the rudiments.  External influences are sensated, sympathized with, to an extraordinary degree, harmonious music sways the body into graces the most affecting; discords jar it as though they would tear it limb from limb; cold and heat are perceived with equal exultation, so also smells and touches.  In short, the whole man appears to be given to each perception, the body trembles like down with the wafts of the atmosphere, the world plays upon it as upon a spiritual instrument finely attuned. (Wilkinson, 1851) 

However, Braid qualifies Wilkinson’s account slightly by adding, 

The above is a beautiful description painted in elegant and most felicitous language, of the phenomena manifested by a certain class of patients, and at a certain stage of the sleep; but at another stage the very opposite state manifests itself: for the abstraction may be so intense as to render the patient unconscious even of inflictions the most severe; and the muscles may be locked in immovable, cataleptic rigidity, or dissolved in the most entire passive flaccidity according to predominant ideas or impressions on the senses, which immediately preceded the full intensity of the all-absorbing abstraction. 

As is the case in reverie or abstraction, so also is it in the hypnotic state – there are different degrees of mental concentration; so that from some of them, the patient may be aroused by the slightest impression – whilst in other stages, he can only be influenced by very powerful impressions on the organs of sense.  Moreover, in the hypnotic condition, as in the state of reverie or abstraction, the subject may be so partially engrossed in his train of thought as to be susceptible of receiving suggestions from others – through words spoken or movements made in his presence – which shall involuntarily or unconsciously change his current of thought and action, without entirely dissipating his condition of mental abstraction. (Braid, 1852) 

So how does this state of heightened mental concentration relate to the practice of meditation?  Ornstein’s survey of meditation practices, in The Psychology of Consciousness (1977), concluded, 

The common element in these diverse practices seems to be the active restriction of awareness to a single, unchanging process and the withdrawal of attention from ordinary thought.  It does not seem to matter which actual physical practice is followed; whether one symbol or another is employed; whether the visual system is used or body movements repeated; whether the awareness is focused on a limb or on a sound or on a word or on a prayer. […] The instructions for meditation are always consistent with this surmise: one is instructed always to rid awareness of any thought save the object of meditation, to shut oneself off from the main flow of ongoing external activity and to pay attention only to the object or process of meditation.  Almost any process or object seems usable and has probably been used.  (Ornstein, 1977: 171-172). 

The analogy with hypnotism is obvious.  However, Braid only became acquainted with literature describing oriental meditation techniques around 1844, three years after his discovery of hypnotism, and a year after publishing his best-known book on hypnosis, Neurypnology (1843).  He first discusses the relationship between hypnotism and meditation in some detail in a lengthy serialised article, published in The Medical Times between 1844 and 1845, entitled “Magic, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, etc., Historically & Physiologically Considered.” 

Braid seized upon the similarity between certain yogic meditation techniques and his own method of hypnotism as evidence in favour of his theory and against that of Mesmer.  He rightly pointed out that most traditional accounts of Oriental meditation resemble self-induced hypnosis, without the aid of another person.  The Mesmerists, who claimed that the effects they produced were due to a magnetic force channelled from the body of the operator into that of the subject, found it awkward, though arguably not impossible, to explain self-hypnosis in such terms.  Braid, who objected that the effects of Mesmerism were due to focused attention, expectation, imagination, etc., could easily account for self-hypnosis, or the existence of similar experiences in solitary meditation.  Indeed, though it was left to later hypnotists to introduce this phrase, Braid appears to argue that all hypnosis is essentially self-hypnosis.  This emphasis upon what he calls the “subjective” nature of hypnotism is central to Braid’s attack on Mesmerism.  However, once he discovered these apparent parallels with eastern meditation techniques, Braid began to consistently assert that hypnotism was more closely related to them than to animal magnetism. 

Inasmuch as patients can throw themselves into the nervous sleep, and manifest all the usual phenomena of Mesmerism, through their own unaided efforts, as I have so repeatedly proved by causing them to maintain a steady fixed gaze at any point, concentrating their whole mental energies on the idea of the object looked at; or that the same may arise by the patient looking at the point of his own finger, or as the Magi of Persia and Yogi of India have practised for the last 2,400 years, for religious purposes, throwing themselves into their ecstatic trances by each maintaining a steady fixed gaze at the tip of his own nose; it is obvious that there is no need for an exoteric influence to produce the phenomena of Mesmerism.  […]  The great object in all these processes is to induce a habit of abstraction or concentration of attention, in which the subject is entirely absorbed with one idea, or train of ideas, whilst he is unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, every other object, purpose, or action.  (Braid, 1846) 

Braid’s interest in meditation really developed when he was introduced to the Dabistān-i Mazāhib, the “School of Religions”, an ancient Persian text describing a variety of Oriental religious practices.                                                                                            

Last May [1843], a gentleman residing in Edinburgh, personally unknown to me, who had long resided in India, favoured me with a letter expressing his approbation of the views which I had published on the nature and causes of hypnotic and mesmeric phenomena.  In corroboration of my views, he referred to what he had previously witnessed in oriental regions, and recommended me to look into the “Dabistan,” a book lately published, for additional proof to the same effect.  On much recommendation I immediately sent for a copy of the “Dabistan”, in which I found many statements corroborative of the fact, that the eastern saints are all self-hypnotisers, adopting means essentially the same as those which I had recommended for similar purposes. (Braid, 1844) 

However, Braid felt that the effects of yogic meditation, like those of Mesmerism, were better explained in terms of established psychological and physiological principles. 

Whilst there is this remarkable coincidence, however, between my own views and theirs, as to the modes of inducing the sleep, and some of the phenomena, in the sequel it will be found that our theoretical views as to the nature and cause of the subsequent and ulterior phenomena, are “wide as the poles asunder.” (Braid, 1844) 

Braid believed that a form of meditation, resembling his self-hypnosis, may have originally developed in ancient Persia among the religious practices of the Zoroastrian Magi, later travelling to India where it formed the basis of Hindu yoga, and being carried westward to the Graeco-Roman world, by sages such as Pythagoras of Samos, in the sixth century B.C.[1] 

So far as can be traced, the Magi of Persia were the first who, by artificial contrivance, for religious purposes, threw themselves into a state of self-hypnotism, or ecstatic trance.  That for the accomplishment of this, they resorted to means essentially the same as those which observation and experience had led me to adopt for the like purposes – and that without any knowledge on my part of their notions or practice – namely, by fixing the sight and thoughts on an object, and suppressing the respiration. (Braid, 1844) 

Braid’s own method, at this stage, also consisted of asking clients to fix their gaze and attention on a single point, while gradually “suppressing” or “restraining” their breathing, a point frequently overlooked by later hypnotists.  This approach had simply evolved from his own experiments with hypnotism, and attempts to provide a more rational explanation for Mesmerism. 

From a very early period of my attention to the subject, I observed the greater difficulty of hypnotising patients who breathed quickly, and therefore desired them to suppress their respiration. (Braid, 1844) 

Once this state of focused attention had been induced it could either be carried on toward a condition resembling sleep or else attention could be transferred onto a single dominant idea for therapeutic purposes. 

Thus, by exciting, and allowing it time to develop itself, any function or emotion which it is desirable to arouse into greater activity; by keeping it in the state of activity, up to the moment of awaking the patient; the impression will be carried into that state, as certainly as a person may be affected the following day by an impressive dream of the previous night. (Braid, 1844) 

Braid saw a striking parallel between his own method of inducing hypnotism and certain methods of meditation described in the ancient oriental texts he had stumbled across.  In his book The Power of the Mind (1846) Braid writes of the meditation techniques used in ancient yoga, “The great object in all these processes is to induce a habit of abstraction or concentration of attention, in which the subject is entirely absorbed with one idea, or train of ideas, whilst he is unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, every other object, purpose, or action.” 

By the term “abstraction”, which he frequently employs, Braid and his contemporaries simply meant a state of mental concentration in which the attention is given to a single idea or train of thought to the exclusion of others.  We might substitute the phrases “selective awareness”, “focused attention”, or “mental absorption.”  Braid’s “abstraction” has two faces, involving both attention to certain ideas and inattention to others, i.e., a kind of dissociation from any potential distractions.  Braid does not use the term “meditation” himself, but he does quote from another author who does, and Braid equates this account of yogic meditation with his own concepts of hypnotism and mental abstraction.  So we can probably say that Braid saw “meditation” and “mental abstraction” as very similar, if not identical, concepts. 

Braid originally studied the effect of fixing the attention upon the gaze of another person, a practice common in Mesmerism.  He then demonstrated that staring upon an inanimate object had the same effect, to which end he employed the top of a bottle, a cork strapped to the subject’s forehead, a chandelier, the tip of the subject’s own finger, his lancet case, and various ornaments and arbitrary objects.  Braid mentions that the yogis of India are frequently described as fixing their gaze upon a part of their body such as the tip of their own nose, the centre of their forehead, or their navel.  However, Braid recognised that physical fixation of the gaze was not essential, and that the words of a simple rhyme (like an Indian mantra) or the mental image of a bright star could serve a similar purpose as the object of mental fixation for inducing hypnotism.  More or less anything, in fact, can be used as the object of concentration if the aim is to pacify the mind by contemplation of something monotonous, or even to induce a state of sleep.  

All that is required for this is simply to place himself in a comfortable posture in bed, and then to close the eyelids, and turn up the eyeballs gently, as if looking at a distant object, such as an imaginary star, situated somewhat above and behind the forehead, giving the whole concentrated attention of the mind to the idea of maintaining a steady view of the star, and breathing softly, as if in profound attention, the mind at the same time yielding to the idea that sleep will ensue, and to the tendency to somnolence which will creep upon him whilst engaged in this act of fixed attention.  Or it may be done with still more success, in certain individuals, by their placing some small, bright object in a similar aspect with a distant light falling thereon, the party looking at the object with open eyes, fixed attention, and suppressed [i.e., relaxed] respiration.  Other modes of producing a state of mental concentration directed to some unexciting and empty thing, and thus shutting out the influence of other sensible impressions, may also prove successful for inducing calm sleep, by monotonising the mind – just as we see effected in the case of children, who are sent to sleep by rocking, patting, or gentle rubbing, or monotonous, unexciting lullabies – but none are so speedy and certain in their effects, with patients generally, as the modes which I have briefly explained.  Mr. Walker’s method of procuring “sleep at will”, by desiring the patient to maintain a fixed act of attention, by imagining himself watching his breath issuing slowly from his nostrils, after having placed his body in a comfortable position in bed – and which was first published to the world by Dr. Binns, a few years ago – is essentially the same as my own method, which I had promulgated some time prior to the publication of the first edition of Dr. Binns’s work on sleep. (Braid, 1852) 

Braid thought that the tranquilising effect of focusing the gaze, or attention, upon a single monotonous object could, with practice, be carried so far as to induce a hypnotic “coma” state resembling the physiological condition of hibernating animals.  He was particularly intrigued by various stories reported by British colonialists in India regarding the supposed burial alive of fakirs, who could apparently slow down their physiological functioning to the brink of death for many days in order to be resuscitated at a later date.  Braid later published a short book entitled Observations on Trance or Human Hybernation (1850) discussing this alleged phenomenon in some detail. 

Braid interpreted the effects of both hypnotism and meditation from a sceptical or “common sense” perspective, rejecting any supernatural claims and preferring to try a “psycho-physiological” interpretation first of all.  

I have seen no reason to believe, that either hypnotism or mesmerism adds a single new faculty, either mental or physical, to the subject; but, by their influence, we acquire the power of throwing them into new ratios, and producing very different results from the normal condition, by exciting or depressing natural functions, in an extraordinary degree.  This is accomplished chiefly through the law of concentration, aided by the state of the respiration and circulation; increasing or diminishing the force and velocity of the circulation, as well as by altering the quality of the blood, by rendering it either more or less arterialised [i.e., oxygenated] than in the normal condition, and consequently capable of exciting or depressing function in a corresponding degree.  There is no difficulty in demonstrating that we have the power of doing this, to the satisfaction of any intelligent and unprejudiced person. (Braid, 1844) 

Braid’s theory of hypnotism held that by focusing the attention upon a repetitive idea or unexciting object a state resembling profound sleep could be induced, or that the opposite state, of nervous tension could be induced by focusing attention upon the idea of doing so.  Moreover, any number of psychological or physiological changes could be induced by shifting the attention onto specific “dominant ideas” or mental images, which we would now call “autosuggestion.”  Indeed, whereas the Mesmerists had relatively neglected the solitary use of such methods, in Observations on Trance (1850), following his discussion of the trances of the Indian fakirs, Braid provides an account of his own use of self-hypnosis to overcome rheumatic pain. 

It is commonly said that seeing is believing, but feeling is the very truth.  I shall, therefore, give the result of my experience of hypnotism in my own person.  In the middle of September, 1844, I suffered from a most severe attack of rheumatism, implicating the left side of the neck and chest, and the left arm.  At first the pain was moderately severe, and I took some medicine to remove it; but, instead of this, it became more and more violent, and had tormented me for three days, and was so excruciating, that it entirely deprived me of sleep for three nights successively, and on the last of the three nights I could not remain in any one posture for five minutes, from the severity of the pain.  On the forenoon of the next day, whilst visiting my patients, every jolt of the carriage I could only compare to several sharp instruments being thrust through my shoulder, neck, and chest.  A full inspiration was attended with stabbing pain, such as is experienced in pleurisy.  When I returned home for dinner I could neither turn my head, lift my arm, nor draw a breath, without suffering extreme pain.  In this condition I resolved to try the effects of hypnotism.  I requested two friends, who were present, and who both understood the system, to watch the effects, and arouse me when I had passed sufficiently into the condition; and, with their assurance that they would give strict attention to their charge, I sat down and hypnotised myself, extending the extremities.  At the expiration of nine minutes they aroused me, and, to my agreeable surprise, I was quite free from pain, being able to move in any way with perfect ease.  I say agreeably surprised, on this account; I had seen like results with many patients; but it is one thing to hear of pain, and another to feel it.  My suffering was so exquisite that I could not imagine anyone else ever suffered so intensely as myself on that occasion; and, therefore, I merely expected a mitigation, so that I was truly agreeably surprised to find myself quite free from pain.  I continued quite easy all the afternoon, slept comfortably all night, and the following morning felt a little stiffness, but no pain.  A week thereafter I had a slight return, which I removed by hypnotising myself once more; and I have remained quite free from rheumatism ever since, now nearly six years.  Was there the slightest room to doubt the value and efficacy of hypnotism in this case? 

However, Braid was emphatic that hypnotism was essentially an extension of ordinary psychological and physiological functioning.  In particular, the effect of focused attention upon a dominant idea is merely a means of amplifying the familiar effects of suggestion and mental association which we observe in everyday life. 

To a certain extent, this fact of excited attention, altering function, is realised even in the waking condition, as is manifest by the rush of milk to the breast of the nurse on seeing, hearing, or even thinking of her child; the flow of saliva, from the sight, or smell, or thought of savoury food; and the tendency to perform other functions, from mental impressions, associated with them, arising in the mind, by whatever means excited. […] Hypnotism merely enables us to control and direct the natural functions, either exciting or depressing them, as required, with more certainty and intensity than in the normal waking condition. 

I might further illustrate the power of the mind in influencing function: by shedding tears from grief; blushing from shame; pallor and palpitation from fear; fainting from disagreeable sights, odours, or even the thoughts of such; the effects of painful intelligence [i.e., unpleasant information], in instantly destroying the keenest appetite; excessive joy, or sorrow, or anger, suddenly producing most grave diseases, mental or physical, or even death. (Braid, 1844) 

Braid had argued that the real physical and mental effects of “bread pills” and other placebo therapies, including homeopathy, were also due to expectation and dominant ideas. 

Braid quotes from the English missionary William Ward’s four-volume A View of the History, Literature and Religion of the Hindoos (1811)[2], and inserts his commentary upon the effects of meditation recounted by the ancient teachers of yoga.  Braid claims that these observations confirm “the fact of the Yogi being all self-hypnotisers, by inducing a state of intense abstraction, from a steady fixed gaze at an object, with a suppressed state of the respiration.”  For example, one of the applications of yogic meditation consists of evoking positive emotions to counter-act and oppose negative ones, a strategy frequently employed in modern psychotherapy.  

Through meditation on the opposite of the source of power (as by meditating on benevolence revenge is destroyed), the Yogi is greatly assisted in his efforts to attain perfect victory. (Braid, 1844) 

Braid argues that when a yogi enters into this state of self-hypnosis, or meditation, his expectations and associations to the state, combined with a lively imagination and focused attention, will frequently result in a variety of dramatic subjective experiences, including hallucinations easily confused with supernatural phenomena.  

Now, accordingly, most of the wonders just to be transcribed, and which the Hindus take to be realities, I can very readily exhibit with many patients; but I explain them merely as vivid mental pictures, or dreams. (Braid, 1844) 

The ancient Hindu sages claimed that during meditation they achieved clairvoyant powers which allowed them to see the interior of the body functioning, and built a primitive science of anatomy and physiology derived from these visions and intuitions.  Braid, quite astutely, uses this fact to illustrate how easily subjective experiences resulting from meditation or hypnotism can be mistaken.  These physical theories, for all their sophistication, were demonstrably false.  In fact, despite many sages meditating upon the concept of human anatomy over a period of three thousand years, Oriental theories were no more accurate than those developed in European countries.  William Harvey discovered the circulatory system by experimental means in 1616.  By contrast, as Braid notes, the yogic sages’ meditations had led them to conclude that the arteries were filled with air rather than blood.  

What follow are a small selection of the yogic powers quoted by Braid with his comments, reducing them to subjective feelings induced by self-hypnosis.  Some of these experiences are quite fantastical and probably mere curiosities; however, others probably have legitimate applications in modern hypnotherapy when presented in the “common sense” way described by Braid.  For example,  

The Yogi who has perfected himself in the three parts of samyama [i.e., yogic self-mastery and meditation] obtains a knowledge of the past and of the future; 

While he accepts that these experiences seem to occur in meditation, and can be induced in self-hypnosis, Braid attributes the apparent insight into the past to “quickened memory” and enhanced foresight to “excited imagination.” 

He who applies samyama to discover the thoughts of others will know the thoughts of all. […] He who applies samyama to that compassion which has respect to the miserable, will secure the friendship of all. 

Braid agrees that the subjective feeling of gaining insight into others thoughts can be induced, writing “He will believe and talk as if he did so.”  Of the feeling of compassion, he writes, “The excitement of this feeling of benevolence being carried into the waking condition, as already explained.”  

He who, according to these rules, meditates on the strength of the powerful, so as to identify his strength with theirs, will acquire the same.   

Through mental imagery, imitation, focused attention, etc., Braid believed that people could actually increase their physical strength, albeit within more realistic bounds.  He writes, “Through this and the law of concentration, I have seen a young woman carry a man or woman in her arms as cleverly as if they had been boys or girls.”  

By a similar application of samyama to the cup at the bottom of the throat, he will overcome hunger and thirst by meditating on the nerve cord, which exists a little below the throat, he will obtain a fixed and unbroken posture in the act of yoga;  

As a result of belief and focused imagination, meditation or self-hypnosis may be able to suppress the feelings of hunger or thirst, or to modify one’s posture.  

He who, in the same manner, meditated on the ear and its vacuum, will hear the softest and most distant sounds, as well as those uttered in the celestial regions, etc.   

Braid had carried out many experiments upon the apparent increase in sensitivity induced by hypnotism, and therefore writes, “This accords with my proposition that calling attention to any organ or function will exalt the energy of the function positively, as well as excite ideas connected with such organ or function.” 

Braid’s reading of both the Dabistan and Ward’s account of Hindu meditation practices therefore led him to conclude, regarding the use of self-hypnosis among ancient sages, 

That the extremely vivid state of their imagination, leads them to believe as reality, whatever ideas are suggested to their minds; and their extreme docility, sympathy, and imitation, induce them instantly to manifest themselves as actively engaged in the scene so vividly portrayed before their fervid imagination. 

That this is accomplished chiefly through the law of concentration, and mental impression, changing physical action, according to the quantity and quality of the blood passing through any particular organ or part in a given time.  

That the notion of spiritual abilities, the soul leaving the body on voyages of discovery to the uttermost parts of creation, seeing through opaque bodies, correct thought-reading, universal lucidity, and a host of omniscient and omnipotent attributes, are mere delusions – being nothing more than vivid mental pictures or dreams. 

That the senses may not only be abnormally quickened, as is the case at one stage; but, at another, they may be rendered so torpid, as to be quite unimpressionable to mechanical or chemical stimuli.  That by judicious management this influence is capable of being rendered a powerful therapeutic agent, either exciting or depressing the natural functions in an extraordinary degree. (Braid, 1844) 

Modern practitioners of yoga, or other forms of meditation, may find in Braid’s hypnotism a theory and practice more aligned with Western psychology and physiology.  Despite the fact that hypnotism was, from its origin, compared with yogic meditation, this analogy has been subsequently neglected and has fallen into disuse.  Modern hypnotherapy has evolved in a different direction, and is probably less similar to traditional eastern meditation techniques than Braid’s original method was.  Braid’s definition of hypnotism as a state of concentration upon a single idea (which he terms “mental abstraction” or “monoideism”) lends itself to the comparison with concentrative meditation techniques. 

From traditional meditation practices, hypnotists might learn the value of teaching clients to persevere with concentration upon a single object or idea, especially an idea of therapeutic value, although the state of general tranquillity induced by means of fixed attention upon an unexciting object, such as meditation upon the tip of the nose or a point on the ceiling, may also be beneficial in many cases.  From hypnotism, on the other hand, meditation practitioners might learn more about the role of prior expectation, social imitation, mental imagery, and autosuggestion in determining the outcome of meditation techniques. 

[2] I have changed the transliteration of Sanskrit terms below, quoted from Ward, to be more consistent with modern versions.