Another important fact is that one can not infrequently influence by suggestion a normally sleeping person and transport him into hypnosis without awakening him. It is still easier, in the reverse direction, to transform hypnosis into ordinary sleep by suggestion.

Lastly, there are some extremely suggestible persons who, on being taken unawares when wide awake, show all the phenomena of hypnosis without first going to Bleep, or can completely fall a prey to the suggestion of a skilled hypnotist. The want of will does not come into consideration in this case. One may at times even succeed in this way with a person who has never before been hypnotized.

As a rule, the sleep produced by suggestion represents the principal factor in the induction of the full action of suggestion. It acts like an avalanche does at the first contact which causes it. The more it grows, the more powerful do the contacts become which the avalanche causes. Sleep or slumbering is produced by suggestion. But as soon as this is present, the suggestibility is increased by sleep, as long as the latter does not become lethargic.

As I mentioned before, every person is in himself suggestible. When one fails to hypnotize a person, the reason must be sought chiefly (and one can be certain of this) in the fact that he either consciously or unconsciously calls forth the autosuggestion that he cannot be hypnotized. Still, the formation of this autosuggestion depends on the individuality of the person. It occurs often in hypercritics and skeptics, and thus one might say that there are very suggestible and also slightly suggestible natures.

Professor Bernheim communicated to me the following case from his clinic privately, and permitted me to publish it here:

"A few days ago a peasant woman was admitted into my wards complaining of gastric and abdominal pains, which I regarded as being of hysterical nature. I was unable to hypnotize her. She told me, too, that Dr. Liebeault had attempted to hypnotize her in childhood, but without success. After two unsuccessful attempts, I said to her: "It is immaterial whether you go to sleep or not I am going to magnetize your abdomen, chest, and stomach, and in this way drive away the pains." I closed her eyes, and in this way continued for about ten minutes to suggest. The pains disappeared without sleep, but returned again after supper. I repeated the same procedure on the next day, with the same result. The pains returned mildly in the evening. To-day I did the same thing over again, and obtained, at the same time as the pains disappeared, a deep hypnotic sleep with amnesia."

Since then I have repeatedly employed similar tricks, and have obtained similar results. It is the simplest way of influencing apparently refractory patients.

Bernheim further adds: "Everything depends on the right inspiration; one has only to discover the right key (il faut trouver le joint) in order to set every individual suggestibility into action - that is, to awaken the suggestibility."

I can only endorse this sentiment. Bernheim once failed to hypnotize a person, and it was afterwards discovered that this person had been hypnotized by Beaunis, who had suggested to him that he alone could do so. I myself induced a deep sleep with post-hypnotic suggestions in a certain lady, but Bernheim was only able to produce sleepiness in the same lady. This was due to the fact that she formed the autosuggestion that I alone could influence and cure her.

It is beyond question that the best hypnotist is he who best knows how to convince those persons whom he intends to hypnotize of his capability of carrying this out, and who is more or less able to induce an enthusiasm for the subject. Thus, enthusiasm is an important factor for the hypnotized as well as for the hypnotist; for one must either be convinced one's self, or, failing this, possess dramatic talent, in order to convince others satisfactorily. But it is the achieved result, the truth of the fact, which induces the greatest enthusiasm both in the passive and in the active party to the contract. The hypnotic epidemics, which have been so much talked of and so misinterpreted, the mass suggestions, the "infection" of hypnotism, depend on this psychological process. Everything which fills us with enthusiasm gains power over our brain activity, easily conquers all the contrary impressions, and suggests to us by means of the stimulation of corresponding plastic pictures of the imagination. Thus, the hypnotizability or suggestibility of a person increases with his enthusiasm and with his confidence, as well as with the enthusiasm and the successes of the hypnotist. And, in the corresponding manner, it sinks with the abatement of the enthusiasm, with mistrust, and with failures. Still, many other individual factors also assist, and especially individual plasticity and intensity of the impressionability, exhaustion, sleep capability, etc, Wetterstrand and Oscar Vogt have especially advanced the development of the methods of therapeutic suggestion.

Wetterstrand laid great stress on the depth of the sleep, as did Liebeault, and practiced the method of protracted sleep (continued for days) in obstinate cases with great success. He further developed this method. He hypnotized his patients together in one half-darkened room, and whispered the suggestions into the ear of each, so that mutual disturbance could be avoided. The whole picture acted in a manner powerfully suggestive on all present.

Oscar Vogt rendered psychological analysis considerably more sound. He, in common with Liebeault, Wetterstrand, and myself, adopted Dellboeuf's views, that the depth of the sleep increases the suggestibility, as long as the connection is maintained. Only once did he experience the loss of the connection, by means of lethargy in a mildly hysterical female. This has occurred to me four times in each sex.

Vogt's method is roughly the same as that which I shall describe presently. Only he avoids all excitement of catalepsy and automatic movements. He simply suggests the component parts of sleep (see below). He carries out hypnosis for the first time quite shortly, and gets the patients to relate what they felt