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The application of the theoretical development of this paper lies in the authors' contention that sensory images (olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, etc.), ordinarily inaccessible to verbal association, can be reëxperienced in moments of 'hypnogogic reveries'. The vividness with which the sensory images can be experienced opens the way to buried memories and their affects.
Considerable emphasis is given to the distinction between the 'process of hypnotism' and the 'hypnotic state'. The former is defined as a gradual reduction of the subject's ties to the environment until a sleeplike state is reached, the hypnotist-subject tie excepted. The hypnotic state consists of that relation wherein the subject entertains the hypnotist's voice as part of his own ego. The incorporated image (voice) of the hypnotist plays the same rôle as an 'unconscious image of the parental figure'. The description of the hypnotic state draws heavily on psychoanalytic concepts while the details of the inductive process utilizes the experimental findings of psychology and physiology to a great extent. It is to the credit of the authors that they have attempted the difficult correlation of research in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, and physiology to arrive at their hypotheses.