Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XIX. Hypnotism
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terror of death gradually vanishing from their
closing eyes.
What was this mysterious force which almost
seemed to emanate from my hand? Where did
it come from? Did it come from the stream of
consciousness within me below the level of my
waking life, or was it after all the mysterious
“odylic force,” the magnetic fluid of the old
mesmerists? Of course modern science has done
away with the magnetic fluid and replaced it with
a dozen new, more or less ingenious theories. I
know them all, none of them satisfies me so far.
Suggestion alone, the very keystone of the now
universally accepted theory on hypnotism, cannot
explain all its startling phenomena. The word
suggestion as used by its chief promoters, the
Nancy school, differs besides only in name from
this now ridiculed odylic force of Mesmer. Let
us admit, as we must do, that the miracle is not
done by the operator but by the subconscious
mind of the subject. But how are we to explain
the success of the one operator and the failure of
another? Why does the suggestion of one
operator re-echo as a word of command in the
subterranean workshop of the subject’s mind to
bring its hidden forces into action while this
same suggestion made by another operator is
intercepted by the subject’s consciousness and
remains ineffective? I, of all people, am anxious
to know it, because ever since I was a boy, I have
been aware that I myself possessed this power,
whatever name is given to it, in an exceptional
degree. Most of my patients, young and old,
men and women, seemed to find it out sooner or
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