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This volume is mainly made up of papers previously published elsewhere. Nearly all the hypnotic techniques described, in current use by the author and others, are known and do not need separate review. The exploration by hypnosis of particular problems (audiometry, vocational guidance), and the combination with psychological test material, is of interest.
Further application is demonstrated in the method of hypno-analysis, in which hypnotic suggestions are given with a broad psycho-analytic orientation. This newer approach claims wider goals; it aims at insight as well as at direct symptom relief. While it is only to be expected that with this procedure the hypnotist should encounter resistances and transference, the divergence between the psycho-analytic and the hypno-analytic methods becomes obvious at this point: the hypnotist uses his technique to undercut resistances and transference and to analyse them only if necessary, the analyst uncovers deeper layers by constant analysis of resistance and transference; the hypnotist aims predominantly at remembering, the analyst at operating Freud's classical triad: remembering, repeating, and working through.
These points emerge on reading the presented case material which covers a wide variety of symptomatology, perhaps with some preponderance of hysterical conditions: phobias, conversions, fugues, anxiety states, amnesias. Owing to the fragmentary nature of the case reports it cannot always be ascertained to what extent the author's hypno-analytic method results in wider insight on the part of the hypnotist or on that of the patient or both. Perhaps the eclectic adoption of psycho-analytic findings is also responsible for a lack of clarity on this issue. It is indeed to be regretted that the author has not used his evidently wide experience with hypnosis for a metapsychological study of the changes brought about in the patient's mental economy by this form of treatment. The self-hypnotic dreams, for instance,