Hypnoanalysis: By Lewis R. Wolberg. New York: Grune & Strattan, 1945. 342 pp.

With the publication of this remarkable book, it becomes necessary to take seriously the potentialities of a form of psychotherapy which combines hypnosis with psychoanalysis in a technique called 'hypnoanalysis'. As a result of the investigations of the last decade, the harsh judgment which Freud passed on hypnotherapy seems no longer tenable. In his Introductory Lectures, for example, in addition to stating that hypnosis was a sort of mechanical drudgery, 'hodman's work', reminiscent of magic, conjuring and hocus-pocus, unreliable and capricious in its results and calculated to rob the patient of his independence, Freud raised three more serious objections. First, and still valid today, is the failure of a very large percentage of subjects to attain a somnambulistic trance. Second, Freud believed that hypnosis 'drives back the resistances and frees a certain field for the work of the analysis, but dams them up at the boundaries of this field so that they are insurmountable'. Third, in several places in his works, Freud relates the story of the young woman who, on emerging from a trance, threw her arms around his neck. This kind of thing he felt made it imperative to inquire into the problem of the nature and source of suggestive authority. It was historically important and necessary for Freud