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Hypnotism and Psycho-Analysis: A Comparison.—In these days of stress, when neurasthenia stalks grimly in our midst, it will not be out of place to compare hypnotism and psycho-analysis in their curative aspects.
I will declare frankly at the start, that I am in favor of psychoanalysis, but by comparing the two treatments desire to show the reason for my preference.
The power of the hypnotist lies in the capacity for arousing “a desire to please” the physician, in the mind of his patient.
We must then ask ourselves, “Why does the patient desire to please the physician?” The answer is or must be, if truthful, “because the hypnotist has succeeded in attracting the patient's libido.” Soul and body cannot be divided. Where the mind leads the body follows and vice versa.
It will be useless to hold up one's hands in horror at the above statement. We are not treating the subject sentimentally, but scientifically.
Conscientious hypnotism is a partial sublimation of the sexual instincts, because a worthy operator honestly desires to benefit humanity.
But unless he can attract the patient sexually, however subconscious the process may remain, he may just as well sail paper boats on the nearest pond!
The objection to this statement that at once occurs to the lay mind is: “How can a male operator attract a male patient ?”
In these enlightened days we have learned that the line between male and female is “an imaginary line,” and that no hard-and-fast demarcation of the sexes is possible.
Let us now turn to the question of psycho-analytic treatment.