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This presentation is made in the hope of illuminating further the mechanisms underlying hysteria and its symptomatic manifestation of somnambulism. A secondary aim is to illustrate in additional detail (and provoke further discussion of) the technique of hypnoanalysis as it has been used by the writer during more than five years of intensive work with inmates of a large Federal penitentiary. A more complete summation of the hypnoanalytic method, with its aims, applicability and justification has been attempted elsewhere. In this paper, therefore, no apologetics will be engaged. Suffice it, then to state that the results which will appear were brought about by a carefully interwoven combination of hypnosis and free-association periods the aims of which were to bring to the surface repressed material, to validate beyond doubt the substrata of awareness, and to imbed firmly as novel accretions to the personality the analytic interpretations and significances arrived at by the patient's own efforts.
The patient was a young, healthy, serious-minded male who had adjusted very well to institutional routine and who was being considered for a parole. It was decided that since (as will be shown presently) the psychological implications of the case were the major factors involved, the possibilities of treatment should be explored and the question of parole made dependent upon the outcome of such treatment. In spite of our patient's fine institutional record, pleasing personality, serious plans for the future and excellent general attitude, the paroling authorities were reluctant to grant parole if examination disclosed the possibility of future “attacks,” or prognosticated further difficulties with the law. The patient himself stated that he preferred to be treated for his condition than to be released under the perpetual shadow of further episodes.
Intensive examination with diagnostic and exploratory addenda to clinical interviews established the diagnosis and pointed to suff