FREUD AND HYPNOSIS

Abstract

Because Freud abandoned the use of hypnosis, most psychoanalysts tend to regard it as nothing more than an outdated concept of merely historical interest. Hypnosis, however, continues to provide a fertile field for research, insofar as no theory as yet propounded has proffered a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to show in what way Freud revived professional interest in the problems of hypnosis, and moreover, how this subject remained an enigma to him to the end of his days. At the outset Freud was subjected to the combined influence of Charcot and Bernheim. The former drew his attention to the psychological dimension of hypnosis; but he was still the captive of physiological determinism. Bernheim, on the other hand, held that hypnotic manifestations are referable to suggestion alone, and are therefore of a purely psychical nature. On deeper investigation of the idea of suggestion, Freud came to discover the libidinal dimension of the hypnotic relationship, and to elaborate the concept of transference. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego he attempted a more precise analysis of this transference. He emphasized the desexualization of the hypnotic relation, which in this respect he likened to group phenomena. In his view, collective psychology, just as hypnosis, is based on repression of the sexual instinct by the subject, who renounces his own libidinal demands in order to identify completely with one or more other persons. Freud explained this repression by the primitive human social organization, where the primal father had forbidden his sons access to the women of the tribe. Hypnosis is thus the reanimation in the subject of this archaic relation to the father. In the author's opinion, Freud was led to formulate this hypothesis because he realized that the explanation of hypnosis by transference did not account for the psychophysiological changes in the subject which are so characteristic of the hypnotic state. The phylogenetic hypothesis provides for him a possible answer to this problem, since, in this perspective, hypnosis represents a return to an archaic phase of human development inherent in the biological heritage of the species. We are, then, dealing here with a specific state of consciousness. Freud's recourse to phylogeny indeed bears witness to his difficulty in finding an explanation of the relationship between the psychic and the somatic, which is nevertheless one of the postulates implicit in psychoanalysis. More than 30 years after Freud's death, this relationship still evades our comprehension. Thus, hypnosis, far from being a museum piece, in fact borders on questions which are still today a focus for psychoanalytic investigations.