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A Discussion was opened by the president of the Sty. Dr. T. W. Mitchell on Ferenczi's paper „The Psychoanalysis of Suggestion and Hypuotism“, of which a copy had been previously distributed to each member of the Sty.-Mitchell opined that the prevalent attitude of the members toward the work of Freud and his school should bee that of suspended judgment, impartial investigation and attention to all that the Freudians have to say. It was Freud's wide connotation of the term sexuality that was responsible for much of the opposition to his views; the inclusion of many divergent forms of feeling and conation under a common term served no useful purpose. If the most highly valued of mans attributes was attained through the sublimation of sexual impulses, then sublimation should not be regarded merely as a harmless outlet for unsatisfied sexual desire, but rather as a normal necessary part of the evolutionary process by which man rises above the level of the brutes.
In regard to Ferenczi's paper, he disputed the correctness of his account of the origin and nature of suggestibility, considering it „an innate tendency of the mind and a necessary condition of the growth of personality“, as „action prompted by the herd-instinct as opposed to the purposive action of the personal will“. The state of subjection described by Ferenczi as characteristic of a stage in the normal psychical development of the child, he regarded rather as a phase of personality normally evocable at all ages by appropriate circumstances, and having no constant or necessary relation to psycho-sexual activities“. „The occurrence of the desire for subjection as one of the impulse-components of sexual desire gives no justification to the view that feelings of subjection are always related to psycho-sexual activities“. Ferenczi's views throw no light, moreover, on the real problems of hypnotism, on the apparently supernormal power which the hypnotised person possesses over his own organism. There would seem to