VI. Suggestion from Another as Artificial Monoideism

VI. Suggestion from Another as Artificial Monoideism.VI. Die Fremdsuggestion als künstlicher Monoideismus.

Every new truth has to pass through two periods before it receives the position due to it. First it is rejected because it does not fit into the ruling system; but then, when the fact can no longer be denied and the necessity exists of coming to terms with it and granting it a place in the system, it is fitted to the system. Instead of taking it as it offers itself, it is mutilated, twisted, falsified and forced into the system in this shape. Only at the end do people bring themselves to see in the fact the unchangeable, in the system the changeable, and only now, to bring both into harmony, is the system remodelled, which ought to have been done from the beginning.

This is a phenomenon recurring so regularly in the history of the sciences that its repetition on the occasion of the discovery of hypnotism and suggestion was to be expected beforehand. Braid died forgotten; Durand de Gros, who deepened Braid’s teachings,¹⁾ was not recognized; and Liébault, who used hypnotism in his medical practice and healed with it, for 25 years roused only the laughter of his colleagues, who did not heal. Only in 1886 did the Revue de l’hypnotisme begin to appear, and with it public expression was given to the final recognition of hypnotism.