De la suggestion dans l’état hypnotique et dans l’état de veille

Paris: Octave Doin, 1884. FIRST EDITION. Original printed wrappers. An excellent copy. First edition, the foundational work of the Nancy school of hypnotism. Bernheim (1837-1919), a professor in the Faculté de Médécine at Nancy, began studying hypnotism, suggestion and hysteria after observing Liebault’s method of treatment by induced sleep. Like Liébeault, Bernheim studied the scientific applications of hypnotism and substituted verbal for sensory stimuli; he interpreted hypnotism and its consequent phenomena as being the result of suggestion.

“After two years of working closely with Liébault, Bernheim published the present work in which he stated that hypnosis was not a pathological state based on physiological processes, as Charcot had claimed, but a purely psychological state closely connected with suggestion. Bernheim was the first to state that the states of hypnosis posited by Charcot were actually artifacts produced by suggestion; he also demonstrated that Charcot’s ‘four-phase hysteria’ was not an illness but a psychoneurotic reaction caused by suggestion, and curable by the same process. He believed that suggestibility was not limited to hysterics but extended to the entire human race, and used the study of suggestibility to gain insight into human behavior. ‘Historically this conception of Bernheim’s ... should be considered the first (known) attempt to evolve a general understanding of human behavior and its motivation on the basis of the study of psychopathology rather than on the basis of philosophical systems’ (Zilboorg & Henry, p. 368)” (Norman). Bernheim here highlights the essential role of suggestion in the production and development of the very curious mental states which constitutes hypnotism in its varying degrees. He offers a careful examination, based on a large number of experiments, of all the phenomena relating to suggestion.

Garrison & Morton, 4995.1; Norman 210.