Евгений Шубралов – Suggestion at a distance: theory, practice and philosophy (страница 3)

It is easy to see from here that the ways to convey mental states through suggestion are much more numerous and diverse than the ways to convey thoughts through persuasion. That is why suggestion is generally a more common factor than persuasion.

The latter can act primarily on persons with sound and strong logic, whereas suggestion acts not only on persons with sound logic, but even more so on persons with insufficient logic, such as children and commoners.

Undoubtedly, therefore, the suggestion or inculcation of mental states plays a particularly prominent role in our education, at least until the logical apparatus of the child reaches a certain degree of its development, allowing him to assimilate logical conclusions no less than the finished products of the mental work of others, assimilated through so-called mechanical memorization and imitation, in which suggestion, or mental inoculation by caregivers and others plays a significant role.

Similarly, in the ordinary class of the population, suggestion, or inoculation of ideas, plays an important role as a factor that significantly affects the worldview of individuals and even entire societies.

Anyone who has treated the people knows this well from his own experience and knows the value of logical beliefs, which, if successful, are only by slowly assimilating them, whereas suggestion in the form of persuasion or command almost always acts quickly and correctly here, of course, if they do not contradict the ingrained beliefs of the people.

The influence of the command in the troops, as we have already mentioned, is also mainly reduced to suggestion, which acts stronger than any persuasion. But even on intelligent people with well-developed logic, suggestion acts in certain cases hardly less strongly than on children and commoners, at least in such cases when it does not contradict the established worldview.

If suggestion, as it was clarified above, is nothing more than the influence of one person on another by directly instilling ideas, feelings, emotions and other psychophysical states without the participation of the personal consciousness of the person being suggested, then it is obvious that it can manifest itself most easily when it penetrates the mental sphere imperceptibly, insinuatingly, in the absence of resistance on the part of the "I" of the subject, or at least with the passive attitude of the latter towards the object of suggestion, or when it immediately suppresses the psychic "I", eliminating all resistance on the part of the latter. Experience really confirms this, since suggestion can be introduced into the psychic sphere either little by little through constant statements of the same kind and persuasion, or immediately like an imperative order.

SUGGESTION IN HYPNOSIS

Although all of the above defines the subject itself quite accurately, nevertheless it should be mentioned that we could not form a clear idea about the effect of suggestion and the spread of mental infection or contagion until the conditions necessary for the implementation of suggestion and the spread of mental infection were more closely clarified.

We were able to find out these conditions only later, along with the development of the doctrine of intentional suggestion produced in hypnosis. Just as the spread of physical infection was so recently dominated by the most vague ideas until it became possible to produce pure cultures of microbes and with their help to produce artificial inoculations of diseases, so in the matter of suggestion and mental infection there were many the most confused and unclear ideas until it became possible to study more closely conditions for the inoculation of certain mental states with the help of intentional suggestion.

Experience shows that for the most part such intentional inoculation of certain mental states succeeds best in a special state of consciousness, which we call hypnosis and which, in my opinion, is nothing more than a modification of ordinary sleep caused by certain techniques. See V.Bekhterev. Hypnosis and its significance as a medical remedy. Nervous diseases in individual observations, 1894; The therapeutic value of hypnosis. St. Petersburg, 1900.

As you know, the most diverse suggestions are easily successful in hypnosis. However, the question of whether we can inspire in hypnosis everything that we wish, still remains to be fully clarified. According to some authors, there are no boundaries at all for suggestion, others, on the contrary, hold the view that in hypnosis only what corresponds to the mental nature of a person can be suggested. Practically, the question boils down mainly to the possibility of suggesting certain crimes, and some authors were inclined to assert that a hypnotist is able to perform any crime under the influence of suggestion, whereas other authors saw in these statements only a simple fascination with laboratory crimes committed in hypnosis, rightly noting that the hypnotist is not completely devoid of consciousness and therefore when he is inspired by this or that crime, he is well aware that this crime is not a serious matter, that it is really only an imaginary crime and that all this is done only to test him and therefore he carries it out without much resistance, as an innocent joke.

As for me, guided by my experience, I do not take the side of those authors who attribute to suggestion in hypnosis the role of an all-powerful factor that can make anything out of a hypnotist. The power of his suggestion in this, as in other cases, undoubtedly depends not only on the ability to inspire and support suggestion, but also on the soil on which suggestion acts, in other words, on the mental nature of the person being subjected to suggestion. Thus, the mental resistance to suggestion produced in hypnosis largely depends both on the greater or lesser depth of hypnosis, and on the extent to which this suggestion is in conflict with the ideas, inclinations and beliefs of the person being subjected to suggestion. In the absence of such a contradiction, suggestion acts strongly and faithfully; on the contrary, when meeting with a strong nature holding opposite views, suggestion may be powerless.

But does this diminish the importance of suggestion as an important mental factor? Not at all. After all, there are not many people with strong character and persistent ideas. And there are few people who are so morally ill-mannered that they do not commit certain crimes, for example, against morality and property, only because of fear of responsibility before the law. Is it not enough, therefore, in one way or another, to lull them into this fear by hypnosis and instill faith in the possibility of avoiding responsibility before the law, while at the same time strengthening in their imagination the beneficial consequences of a crime in order to persuade them to commit this crime, which under other conditions they would never have done?

But we would digress very far if we were to elaborate on this issue in detail. Therefore, without touching on the more purely practical side of the question of the meaning of hypnotic crimes, we will note here that hypnosis is of deep interest to us not only from the practical side, but also with regard to studying the question of the most favorable conditions of suggestion. What really explains the fact that hypnosis is good at suggestion? One can think that hypnosis, as a state close to or akin to normal sleep, in itself already constitutes a favorable condition for suggestion. But experience shows us that the degree of suggestibility does not always go hand in hand with the depth of sleep. There are very deep degrees of hypnosis, such as the lethargic phase of Charcot, which are completely inaccessible to suggestion. On the contrary, in other cases, already weak degrees of hypnosis are characterized by extraordinary suggestibility.

It is also known that ordinary sleep for the most part does not constitute a favorable condition for suggestion, although in some states of natural sleep there are conditions as favorable for suggestion as in hypnosis.

Hence it is clear that the degree of suggestibility is determined not by hypnosis or sleep itself, but by that special state of consciousness or mental activity that we have in hypnosis, and sometimes in ordinary sleep.

These conditions, which favor suggestion in hypnosis, consist in the fact that with a change in normal consciousness, expressed by a greater or lesser falling asleep of the "I" and not excluding communication with the outside world, or at least not excluding communication with the hypnotist, the suggestions produced by the latter enter the mental sphere directly and independently of the personal consciousness of the hypnotized subject in other words, besides his "I". Anchored in those depths of the soul that have often been called and are called unconscious or subconscious and which are more correctly called the sphere of general consciousness, these suggestions subsequently enter by themselves into the sphere of personal consciousness and, without being recognized as extraneous suggestions, since their primary source for personal consciousness remains hidden, subjugate personal consciousness more or less to a significant extent.