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“There is no doubt that the field of hypnotic treatment is far more extensive than that of other methods of treating nervous illnesses. Nor is there any justification for the reproach which asserts that hypnosis is only able to influence symptoms and then only for a short time. If hypnotic treatment is directed only against symptoms and not against pathological processes, it is following precisely the same path which all other therapeutic methods are obliged to take.
If hypnosis has had success, the stability of the cure depends on the same factors as the stability of every cure achieved in another way. If what it was dealing with were residual phenomena of a process that was concluded, the cure will be a permanent one; if the causes which produced the symptoms are still at work with undiminished strength, then a relapse is probable. The employment of hypnosis never excludes that of any other treatment, dietetic, mechanical, or of some other sort. In a number of cases - namely where the symptoms are of purely psychical origin - hypnosis fulfils all the demands that can be made of a causal treatment, and in that case questioning and calming the patient in deep hypnosis is as a rule accompanied by the most brilliant success.
Everything that has been said and written about the great dangers of hypnosis belongs to the realm of fable. If we leave on one side the misuse of hypnosis for illegitimate purposes - a possibility that exists for every other effective therapeutic method - the most we have to consider is the tendency of severely neurotic people, after repeated hypnosis, to fall into hypnosis spontaneously. It is the physician's power to forbid this spontaneous hypnosis, which would seem to come about only in very susceptible individuals. People whose susceptibility goes so far that they c:n be hypnotized against their will, can also be protected fairly completely by a suggestion that only their physician will be able to hypnotize them." |
