Studies on the Nature of Suggestion—Part I Experimental Induction of Dreams by Direct Suggestion1

Thirty years ago Freud (12) commented that, "Now that I once more approach the riddle of suggestion after having kept away from it for some thirty years, I find there is no change in the situation." Earlier Ferenczi (6) had shown that the capacity to be influenced by suggestion depends upon the possibility of transference taking place, that is, upon the reactivation of repressed, infantile erotic attitudes toward the parent figures. Freud (12) later defined suggestion as a conviction which is not based upon perception and reasoning but upon an erotic tie. He advanced our theoretical understanding in his conception that in suggestion sexual tendencies are inhibited in their aims and the object takes the place of the ego ideal. Jones (16) developed this latter conception further when he showed that in suggestion there is a regression from the ego ideal to the earlier stage of narcissistic identification with the parent. In the thirty years since Freud made his last contribution to the subject, the theory of suggestion has been relatively neglected in spite of considerable work in the field of hypnotism.

Nunberg (23) once made the statement that the place to study hypnosis is in the analytic transference situation. I was much struck by this seemingly paradoxical remark, since it pointed up the similarities between the two states or relationships. It occurred to me that if one were to introduce suggestions into the relatively