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From time to time in the course of the past fifty years or more a fresh wave of interest has been aroused in the subject of auto-suggestion. These waves fall into four or five fairly well-marked periods, but it is not proposed to give any historical description of them here. On reviewing the literature produced by these different periods one does not, I am afraid, get the impression that the last half-century has seen any serious addition to our knowledge of the subject, which remains much as it was in the days of Baragnon, 2 seventy years ago, who discussed it under the name of automagnétisation.
That being so, it would be tempting to seek elsewhere than in scientific curiosity for the source of the interest that periodically continues to be taken in the subject, and one might in this connection throw out the following suggestions. Assuming that there really is a phenomenon of auto-suggestion, and that its therapeutic value can compare with that of the usual suggestion treatment, then it is clear that the use of it presents two features that are bound to make a wide appeal. In the first place, the idea caters to the universal desire for 'free will' and flatters the narcissistic sense of omnipotence by according with its favourite conception of the ego as a self-sufficing and self-acting agent, independent of the outer world and able to gratify all its wishes by the incantation of magic verbal formulæ.3 In the second place, it specifically delivers the patient from the most dreaded form of outer dependence, namely the sexual transference which psycho-analysis has shown to underlie